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THE rOETEY OF CHAUCER 

A GUIDE TO ITS STUDY AND 

APPRECIATION ^, i i" 

BY 

ROBERT KILBURN ROOT, Ph.D. 

Preceptor in English in Princeton University 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1906 



LIBWAWY of CONGRESS 

Two CopiM Rectiveri 

SEh 27 J906 

CtASS /f XXc. N«. 

co^y'b. 



l^l^^H- 



COPYRIGHT 1906 BY ROBERT KILBURN ROOT 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published October igo6 



PREFACE 

During the last twenty years, the poetry of Chaucer 
has been attaining an ever increasing popularity. Not 
only in our colleges and universities, but among the 
lovers of good literature at large, the discovery has 
been made that the difficulty of Chaucer's language is 
by no means so great as at first appears, and that what- 
ever difficulty there may be is richly compensated by 
the delights which his poetry has to offer. Meanwhile 
the scholars of Europe and America have been busy 
at the task of explaining what needs explanation, of 
investigating the problems of Chaucer's sources, and 
of determining the order in which his works were com- 
posed. It is the purpose of the present volume to ren- 
der accessible to readers of Chaucer the fruits of these 
investigations, in so far as they conduce to a fuller 
appreciation of the poet and his work. For the benefit 
of those who wish to go more deeply into the subject, 
rather copious bibliographical references are given in 
the footnotes. Of Chaucer's biography we know little 
that is really significant ; and that little has been fre- 
quently retold. It has, therefore, seemed better to omit 
any connected account of Chaucer's life, and to give in 
the discussion of the individual poems such biographi- 
cal details as serve to illuminate them. 

From the very nature of his task, the author's obli- 
gations are manifold. From Tyrwhitt down, there is 
hardly a Chaucerian scholar by whose labors he has 
not profited, as a glance at the footnotes will show. 
To Professor Ten Brink, to Professor Lounsbury, to 



vi PREFACE 

Professor Skeat, and to Dr. Furnivall and his collabo- 
rators in the work of the Chaucer Society, his debt is 
particularly large. In making quotations and citations, 
Skeat's Student's Chaucer has been used ; and the 
order in which the several works of the poet are taken 
up is, with one slight exception, that in which they are 
there printed. This has seemed, on the whole, the most 
convenient order ; but the reader may take the chap- 
ters in any order he pleases. To my friends, Professor 
Albert S. Cook of Yale University and Professor 
Charles G. Osgood of Princeton University, I am 
indebted for much valuable criticism. 

K. K. R. 

Princeton University 
May 25, 1906. 



' A CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY OF 
CHAUCER'S LIFE AND WORKS 

(The f«w significant facts of Chaucer's life given below rest on doe- 
unioiitary evidence, and may, therefore, be regarded as certain. The 
chronology of his works is very uncertain ; so that the order here indi- 
cated must be regarded as merely tentative.) 

LIFE 

1340 Chaucer born in London. 

His father, John Chaucer, 

was a vintner, and was in 

some way connected with the 

court of Edward III. (The 

date, 1340, is conjectural.) 
1357 Attached, as a page ('?), to 

the household of Elizabeth, 

Duchess of Clarence. 
1359 Serves in the English army 

in France, and taken prisoner 

by the French. 
13GT Granted a life pension for 

his services as valet in the 

king's household. 



1372-73 First diplomatic mission 
to Italy. 

1374 Appointed Comptroller of 
the customs and subsidy of 
wools, skins, and leather for 
the port of London. (We 
know that in this year the 
poet was already married. 
His wife, Philippa, was prob- 
ably sister-in-law to John of 
Gaunt.) 

1377 Diplomatic missions in Flan- 
ders and France. 

1375 Second journey to Italy in 
the king's service. 

1382 Appointed Comptroller of 
the petty customs. (This 
office he held in addition to 
his earlier office in the cus- 
toms.) 

1385 Granted permission to exer- 
cise his office as comptroller 
through a permanent deputy. 



To this general period may be 

assigned the Komaunt of the 
Hose, and the ' balades, roundels, 
virelayes,' referred to in the 
Prologue to the Legend of Good 
Women. 



1369 The Book of the Duchess. 



' To this general period it has 
been proposed to assign the 
stories of Constance and Cecilia, 
now known as the tales of the 
Man of Law and the Second 
Nun respectively. Perhaps the 
Monk^s Tale in its original form 
belongs here also. 

In the decade 1375-1385 we 
may place : the translation of 
Boethius, Troilus and Criseyde, 
Palamon and Arcite (now known 
as the KnigWs Tale), the story 
of Griselda {Clerk's Tale), the 
Parliament of Fowls (1382), and 
the House of Fame, all of which 
show the influence of Chaucer's 
Italian journeys. The relative 
order of these works has not 
been satisfactorily determined. 



A CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY 



1.j86 Member of Parliament for 
Kent. Gives up his London 
house (and resides at Green- 
wich ?). Deprived (by a hos- 
tile faction at court ?) of his 
offices in the customs. 
1387 Death of Chaucer's wife. 
13S9 Appointed Clerk of the 
King's Works at Westmin- 
ster. 
1390 Clerk of the King's Works 
at Windsor, and member of 
a commission to repair the 
banks of the Thames between 
Woolwich and Greenwich. 

1394 Granted an additional pen- 
sion of 201. a year. (The 
poet seems, however, to have 
been in financial difficulty.) 

1399 On the accession of Henry 
IV, Chaucer's pension again 
increased. He leases a house 
in Westminster. 

1400 Chaucer's death. 



1385-86 The Legend of Good Wo- 
men. 



(Soon after 1387, we may sup- 
pose, were begun the Canterbury 
Tales, on which the poet prob- 
ably worked intermittently till 
his death. 



1391 Treatise on the Astrolabe. 
1393 Envoy to Scogan. 



1396-97 Envoy to Button. 
1399 To his Empty Parse. 



CONTENTS 

I. Chaucer's England 1 

II. Chaucer 14 

III. The Romaunt of the Rose 45 - 

IV. The Minor Poems 57 

V. Boethius and the Astrolabe . . . .80 

u VI. Troilus and CriseVde 87 

VII. The House of Fame 123 ^ 

VIII. The Legend of Good Women .... 135 / 

IX. The Canterbury Tales, Group A . . . 151 ^ 

X. The Canterbury Tales, Group B . . . 181 

XI. The Canterbury Tales, Groups C and D . 219 

XII. The Canterbury Tales, Groups E, F, G, H, I . 253 

Appendix. The Study of Chaucer . . . 291 

Index 293 



THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

CHAPTER I 

CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 

It is five hundred years and more since Geoffrey 
Chaucer was ' nayled in his cheste,' and laid in what 
is now known as the Poets' Corner of Westminster 
Abbey. Many things have happened since that day : 
a new half-world has been discovered ; mighty nations 
have had their birth ; there have been wars and revolu- 
tions ; the great world of science has been opened up, 
changing deeply our thoughts and beliefs, altering rad- 
ically the conditions of our industrial and social life ; 
one poet greater than Chaucer has arisen to grace our 
English tongue. Chaucer would have been intensely 
interested in all these things, could he have known 
them ; but for him they did not exist. If we are to 
enter into the spirit of his poetry, we must forget for 
the time being the present-day world, and all that has 
happened in five hundred years, and live again in a 
day long dead. We must, with William Morris, — 

Forget six counties overhung with smoke, 
Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke, 
Forget the spreading of the hideous town ; 
Think rather of the pack-horse on the down, 
And dream of London, small, and white, and clean, 
The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green. 

When this leap into the dark backward and abysm 
of time has been accomplished, many of the comforts 



2 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

and luxuries of modern life will be found missing : 
houses are less comfortable ; traveling is a slow and 
dangerous process ; there are no newspapers, no tele- 
phones, no tea, coffee, or tobacco. Yet I fancy that 
these things are not so indispensable as our modern 
world thinks. For those of artistic tastes there is rich 
compensation in the external beauty of the life around. 
Nearly all the buildings of modern London which are 
really works of art were standing in Chaucer's day ; 
many buildings of equal beauty were standing then 
which have since perished. In place of the dingy, 
ugly, monotonous buildings which now line the streets 
of London town, stood picturesque houses of half-tim- 
ber, decorated in bright colors. The throngs of people 
passing through the streets must have been a constant 
source of interest and pleasure ; men did not then try 
to efface themselves by sober suits of black or gray. 
My lord passes by resplendent in bright colored silks 
and velvets, his retainers clothed in their distinguish- 
ing livery ; every trade has its peculiar costume. There 
are processions and pageants, with banners and waving 
plumes. Inside the houses one finds quaintly carved 
furniture and splendid pictured tapestries. There is 
a darker side to this picture, which we must also see 
before we are done ; but on the surface it is a gay and 
beautiful life that we have entered. This is indeed 
' merry England.' 

There are many intellectual interests as well. The 
right of the people to govern themselves in Parliament 
is being fought out. The English Church is trying to 
limit the usurpations of the papal power ; Wiclif and 
his poor preachers are sowing the seeds of the English 
Reformation. English commerce is extending itself. 
There is exciting news of the war with France. 

Interesting from many varied aspects, the fourteenth 



CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 3 

century is of particular significance to the student of 
literature and culture, because in it the movement of 
the Kenaissance first assumed definite form, and our 
modern world began. But if the modern world had 
begun to assert itself, the medieval world had by no 
means passed away. Side by side they stood, the old 
and the new, essentially hostile to each other, yet 
blended and intermingled through the whole range of 
society, often in most incongruous fashion. Because 
of their coexistence it is easy to compare and contrast 
them. 

Any attempt at an inclusive definition of mediaeval- 
ism and of the Renaissance is a perilous, perhaps an 
impossible, undertaking ; but it is not so difficult to 
differentiate the two in their main characteristics and 
tendencies, always remembering that we have to do not 
so much with two periods of history as with two oppos- 
ing attitudes of mind, two habits of thought, which 
have always existed side by side, with now one, now the 
other, in the ascendant. The fundamental distinction, 
I think, lies in the fact that the mediaeval mind has its 
gaze fixed primarily on the spiritual and abstract, that 
of the Renaissance on the sensuous and concrete. ' Me- 
diaevalism proclaims that the eternal things of the spirit 
are alone worth while ; the Renaissance declares that 
a man's life consists, if not in the abundance of the 
things he possesses, at any rate in the abundance and 
variety of the sensations he enjoys.' Though it is a char- 
acteristic of the greatest minds that they belong to no 
party, Dante and Shakespeare may be taken to repre- 
sent, in their dominant tendencies, the two habits of 
thought. In their power of poetic insight and obser- 
vation the two poets are nearly equal ; but Dante, 
following the natural bent of his spirit, portrayed the 
world in terms of the abstract, through the language of 



4 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

symbols ; his great poem is a vision, and the person- 
ages of his drama are disembodied souls dwelling- in a 
realm of spirit ; while Shakespeare shows us men and 
women as concrete individuals, living and moving in an 
actual, material world. 

As a direct result of this basic distinction, we pass 
to another which is of almost equal significance. In its 
dealings with society and with humanity in general, 
the mediaeval tends towards communism, the Renais- 
sance towards individualism ; for the individual is a 
concrete fact, the community is an abstract ideal. To 
the mediaeval mind, man is a member of a great spir- 
itual family, the body of Christ, the Church catholic 
and universal. His true happiness, temporal and eter- 
nal, is inseparable from the welfare of humanity as a 
whole. ' For none of us liveth to himself, and no man 
dieth to himself.' Thus Dante, in contrasting spiritual 
and material benefits, explains that with material things 
the larger the number who share in a benefit, the 
smaller is the share of each ; while with spiritual bless- 
ings, in particular the joys of Paradise, the larger the 
number of souls who share, the greater is the portion 
of each. To the mind of the Renaissance, then, bent on 
the sensuous and material, the individual man, his per- 
sonal strivings and accomplishment, becomes the main 
interest. We have the thirst for personal fame, as 
exemplified in the vanity of a Petrarch, replacing the 
anonymous zeal of the cathedral-builders. We have 
the national tendency, the idea of patriotism, as opposed 
to the mediajval conception of a united Christendom, 
a Holy Roman Empire. We have a splitting up of the 
social body into small groups of individuals, but slightly 
interested in one another's welfare. And as the con- 
sciousness of the whole community begins to fade, art 
and literature become limited in their appeal, no longer 



CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 5 

speaking to the whole people, but becoming the exclu- 
sive possession of the educated favored classes, a tend- 
ency which is clearly evident in Petrarch's scorn for 
compositions in the vernacular. 

In the realm of thought, a precisely similar develop- 
ment takes place : the age of faith gives way to the age 
of reason. ' Faith is the evidence of things not seen,' 
that is, of the invisible world, the spiritual. Reason, 
of necessity, confines itself mainly to things which can 
be seen and handled; in a word, to the sensuous and 
material. Or, again, to relate this development to 
that suggested in the preceding paragraph, faith, or 
authority, rests on a communistic basis. A belief in the 
benevolence of God, or in the immortality of the soul, is 
based, apart from any supernatural revelation, on the 
universality of man's instinct that these facts are so. 
This universal instinct gains definiteness in the body 
of dogma held and taught consistently by the Church, 
an essentially communistic organization. According to 
the mediaeval idea, the individual man has literally no 
right to think for himself ; the right of private judg- 
ment, which lies at the very foundation of Protestant- 
ism, is nothing but a corollary of the individualism of 
the Renaissance. 

In the domain of religion and conduct this ' right 
of private judgment ' has had a curious twofold devel- 
opment. Among the more austere races of the north 
it gave rise to the Protestant Reformation, and, car- 
ried out to its logical conclusion, to that ' Protestantism 
of the Protestant religion ' which we call Puritanism. 
Protestantism is essentially the religion of the individ- 
ual. This may be proved first of all by its tendency 
to break up into sects ; it is in its very nature centri- 
fugal. The Protestant, again, is largely concerned with 
what he calls the salvation of his own soul, and in the 



6 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

process of achieving this he feels no need of priestly 
mediation ; he insists, rather, on his direct and personal 
relation to the Deity. It is individualism in religion. 
The Protestant proceeds to create for himself, and with 
delightful inconsistency attempts to force upon oth- 
ers, a moral code of his own, harsh and unlovely, of 
which the Puritan observance of the Sabbath is a good 
example. At the opposite extreme from Puritanism is 
the other development of the Renaissance spirit, most 
conspicuous among the more passionate peoples of the 
south, in which men used their right of private judg- 
ment to overthrow all religion and morality. Morality 
conveniently divides itself into duty towards God and 
duty towards one's neighbor. If one doubts the exist- 
ence of God, he disposes easily of one half of his duty ; 
if he exalts his individual well-being at the expense of 
the common good of society, his duty towards his neigh- 
bor troubles him but little. And so we find in the 
Italian Renaissance a strong tendency towards irreligion 
and immorality, which may express itself in the moral 
laxity and religious indifference of a Boccaccio, or in the 
diabolic malignity of a Caesar Borgia or a Catherine de 
Medici. 

If, now, we try to balance up the profit and loss to civ- 
ilization and culture which have ensued on the triumph 
of that Renaissance spirit, which is still dominant at 
the present day, we shall find the account a complicated 
one. To the heightened interest in material and sen- 
suous things, and to the activity of the individual mind, 
we owe, of course, the whole of our modern science ; to 
the same causes we owe a great part of our noblest 
literature and art, our Michael Angelo and our Shake- 
speare. This is no mean debt. Yet we must remem- 
ber that this very art which we prize is a possession of 
only the few ; the ' plain man ' has no portion in it. Of 



CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 7 

what sort are the books and pictures which we produce 
for him ? Art has been divorced from daily life. If we 
have greater poems and finer pictures than the Middle 
Ages knew, what of our carpets, our hangings, our fur- 
niture, our buildings, the dishes from which we eat? 
Then, too, we have to charge up against the Renais- 
sance our complexity of life, our unsettled doubts, our 
ambitions and discontents. And, lastly, there is the 
hideous fact that our boasted civilization is largely 
a civilization of materialism, of selfishness and legal- 
ized greed. After studying the past and studying the 
present, we must strive to see both the benefits and 
the limitations which these two great world-tendencies 
have to offer, and, holding narrowly to neither, must so 
adjust and balance the two that we may attain to that 
golden mean which shall usher in the golden world. 

In the light of these distinctions between mediasvalism 
and the Renaissance, it will be well to jfass in hasty 
review the great movements of the fourteenth century, 
political, social, religious, and literary, in order to see 
more clearly in what sort of a world Chaucer lived 
and worked. 

Politically, the most significant movement, in Eng- 
land at least, is the trend towards national consciousness. 
Henry II, on his accession to the throne of England 
in 1154, controlled more than half of what is now 
France. Normandy he inherited from the Conqueror, 
Anjou from his father, Geoffrey; Aquitaine was his 
through the right of Eleanor his queen. Normandy and 
Anjou had been lost in the reign of King John (1199- 
1216) ; but Aquitaine was still a possession of the 
English crown when Edward III came to the throne 
in 1327. The national tendency, asserting itself in 
France, led the French king to the endeavor to bring 
all Frenchmen under his own control; and this was 



8 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

the ultimate cause of the Hundred Years' War, which 
began in 1337. The long continued war served to 
strengthen immeasurably in each country the bud- 
ding instinct of patriotism. Men began to feel that 
they were Englishmen or Frenchmen; and the idea 
of a Holy Roman Empire faded gradually from their 
thoughts. 

The battle of Crecy (1346) and of Poitiers (1356) 
had not only fanned the flame of patriotism, but, won 
as they were by the archery of English yeomen, they 
increased immensely the importance of the middle 
classes, and hastened the fall of feudalism. With this 
increased importance of the commoners went a corre- 
sponding increase in the power of Parliament, which 
reached its flood tide in the ' Good Parliament ' of 1376. 
It is in this period that we first find clearly asserted 
the right of Parliament to vote taxes, on which as a 
corner-stone has since been built the edifice of English 
liberty. 

This democratic tendency in English politics is even 
more plainly marked in the social and industrial de- 
velopment of the fourteenth century. With the rapid 
growth of commerce and manufacture, and the conse- 
quently increased importance of the towns, there arose 
a large and prosperous hourgeois class, which, being 
as it was entirely without the pale of the feudal sys- 
tem, hastened its disintegration. For a discontented 
serf could become a freeman by establishing a legal 
residence in one of the towns ; and the vassal of higher 
station found himself overtopped in wealth, and conse- 
quently in influence, by the prosperous burgher. The 
emancipation of the laboring class from the bonds of 
serfdom was furthered by the great plague which swept 
over England, as over the rest of Europe, in 1348 and 
1349. With half the population wiped out, the landown- 



CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 9 

ers found themselves with only half the former supply 
of labor, and only half the demand for their products. 
Tlie price of labor rose, and the price of bread fell. 
The old feudal obligation of the serf to labor a certain 
number of days on his master's land had already, in 
large measure, been commuted into a money rent, and 
the laborers were not slow to take advantage of the 
opportunity to demand higher wages for their labor. 
The attempts to control the price of labor by legislation 
had little effect save to irritate the laborers, an irrita- 
tion which reached its climax in the peasants' revolt of 
1381. This revolt, suppressed by the courage and good 
judgment of the boy king, Richard II, though barren 
of any direct and immediate results, exerted a lasting 
influence on the temper of the lower classes, fostering 
in them a spirit of independence which made them 
no longer a negligible quantity in the life of the nation. 
They ceased to be merely a part of the social organism, 
and became, with their betters, individuals conscious of 
their individuality. 

The new-born spirit of nationality, which was per- 
vading all of English life, found striking expression 
in the relations of England with the Papacy. Eng- 
land had been formerly, of all nations, most loyal in 
its allegiance to the Pope ; but when in 1309 the seat 
of the Papacy was removed to Avignon, and the holy 
father himself became a creature of the French king, 
loyalty to the Pope came into conflict with hatred of 
France, and the new sentiment of national patriotism 
proved the stronger. Though the popes of the 'Baby- 
lonian captivity ' seem not to have been wicked men, 
they were, at any rate, weak men ; and the papal court 
became a centre of luxury and vice. To support this 
luxury it became necessary to sell the Church's pre- 
ferment; and England, where the Church owned in 



10 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

landed property alone more than one third of the soil 
of the realm, and received in dues and offerings an 
income amounting to twice the king's revenue, was 
a particularly rich field for papal simony. When for- 
eigners, French and Italian, were preferred to the rich- 
est livings in England, and proceeded to spend their 
incomes abroad, the national pride, if not the national 
conscience, was aroused ; and when a French pope, as 
the last court of appeal in matters of the canon law, 
set aside the decisions of English courts, the injury 
to English pride was still deeper. In 1351 was passed 
the Statute of Provisors, which aimed to stop the first 
of these abuses, and two years later the Statute of 
Prwrnunire, was directed against the second. 

This anti-papal agitation, though purely political in 
character, could not fail to shake also the religious 
authority of the Church. A pope who was a French- 
man, and therefore an enemy of England, could not 
command the full religious loyalty of Englishmen, 
especially when his court was notorious for its extrav- 
agance and profligacy. Not unnaturally the corruption 
at the head spread through the whole body ; and we 
are unfortunately compelled to believe that the picture 
of clerical avarice drawn by Chaucer and his contem- 
poraries is but little exaggerated. Though the Church 
has always taught that the tmworthiness of the minis- 
ter does not vitiate the efficacy of his sj^iritual minis- 
trations, it was inevitable that even the untutored mind 
should question the value of an absolution bought with 
a price from a grasping and unscrupulous priest, and 
that questioning this, it should question further. If 
this was not enough, what must have been the conster- 
nation of the devout when, in 1378, the great schism 
of the west began, and Europe beheld two rival popes, 
each hurlinji: anathemas at the other and at the other's 



CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 11 

supporters ! Whichever pope you recognized, you 
were excommunicated by the other ; and how was one 
to tell ? England, of course, gave official recognition 
to Urban VI, the Pope of Rome, while France recog- 
nized Clement VII at Avignon ; but the prestige of 
the i^apal name, and the authority of the Church as a 
whole, received a crushing blow. The more worldly, 
like Chaucer, laughed at the whole thing ; the more 
devout either bewailed impotently, like Gower and 
Langland, the corruption they could not cure, or were 
driven, like Wiclif, into an open revolt, which was to 
be the precursor of the Protestant Reformation. 

The corruption in the Church and its attendant 
moral laxity led to corruption in the whole social body. 
' If gold rust, what shall iron do ? ' Chaucer's Pro- 
logue shows us a world in which avarice and deceit 
are all but universal, and the Prologue to the Vision 
of Piers Plowman bears witness only less vigorously 
to the same facts. The world, as Langland sees it, is 
indeed a ' fair field ; ' but the laborers are unworthy. 
His men are wandering in a maze, and everything is 
going wrong. Here are men at the plow, working hard, 
playing but seldom. What is the result of their work ? 
They are winning what wasters destroy with gluttony. 
Pilgrims and palmers go on their journeys ; and with 
what result ? They have leave to lie all the rest of their 
lives. Friars, whose business it is to preach the gospel, 
gloze it to their own profit. Parsons and parish priests 
are forsaking their charges to go up to London and 
sing in chantries at Paul's. Bishops neglect their spir- 
itual duties to take office under the King and count his 
silver. Gower, too, in the Prologue to his Confessio 
Amantis, reviews the condition of Church and State, 
and, less vigorously but no less clearly, portrays the 
same state of thiuo-s : — 



12 THE POETRY OF CHAUCEii 

Lo, thus tobroke is Cristes folde, 
Wherof the flock withoute guide 
Devoured is ou every side, 
In lacke of hem that ben unware 
Schepherdes, whiche her wit beware 
Upon the world in other halve. 
The sharpe pricke instede of salve 
Thei usen now, wherof the hele 
Thei hurte of that they scholden hele ; 
And what schep that is full of wuUe, 
Upon his back, thei toose and puUe. 

But if the world of fourteenth -century England was 
sadly out of joint, it was far from being stagnant. In 
its intellectual ferment the age had much the same 
character as the age of great Elizabeth. There was the 
same glow of patriotism and national consciousness 
consequent upon a series of brilliant victories against a 
foreign foe ; there was the same spirit of revolt against 
a foreign church ; and, though the forms of mediaeval- 
ism still survived, there was at work the same leaven 
of new ideas and of a new conception of life, reinforced 
by a new interest in the works of classical antiquity, 
coming over-seas from Italy ; literature and art was 
breaking away from the conventional, and, under the 
influence of new models, was drinking again at the 
fountain-head of nature. For such periods of restless- 
ness and change have often given birth to great crea- 
tive literature. 

Among a throng of lesser writers who contributed 
to the literature of fourteenth-century England, five 
stand out preeminent. There is the nameless author 
of Sir Gawayne and the Pearl, who, thoroughly medi- 
aeval in his sympathies, infused new life into the old 
forms of the romance and the vision. There is Lang- 
land, who, though a mediaeval in his habits of thought, 
had an independence of judgment, a vigor of expression, 



CHAUCER'S ENGLAND 13 

and a strong tinge of democracy, even of socialism, 
withal, which are essentially modern. There is Gower, 
at whom it is the fashion nowadays to laugh as ponder- 
ous and dull, but who has, nevertheless, a command of 
language, a mastery of metre, above all a faculty of 
simple, straightforward story-telling, wbicb are far from 
contemptible, and which make his Confesslo Amantis, 
when taken in small doses, at times really charming. 
There is the vigorous prose of Wiclif in his sermons 
and in his translation of the Bible, which is informed 
with the spirit of modern Protestantism, though tem- 
pered, to be sure, with some of the sweetness of medi- 
aBval Catholicism. If none of these is an author of the 
first importance, it is none the less true that nearly two 
hundred years were to elapse before any other English 
authors should arise to equal any one of them. Finally, 
there is Chaucer, the most perfect exponent of his age, 
who blended in himself both the old and the new, the 
mediaeval and the modern, who not only represents his 
age, but, transcending its limitations, has become one 
of the foremost English poets for all time. 



CHAPTER II 

CHAUCER 

If the critic is to pass beyond the study of individual 
poems, and seek after a comprehensive estimate of a 
poet's whole work, or if he would wring from a series 
of writings the secret of the writer's soul, and strive to 
learn what manner of man he was and by what stages 
he became what he became, it is a question of the 
first importance to discover in what order his works 
were composed, and to determine, whenever possible, at 
least an approximate date for the composition of each. 
In the case of more modern authors, in general of those 
who lived after the invention of printing, the problem 
is usually solved by a mere inspection of the dates on 
the title-pages or in the prefaces of their volumes ; but 
with authors like Shakespeare, who avoided publication 
by printing, and still more with avithors like Chaucer, 
who never heard of the printing-press, the problem is 
more serious. The investigator must, as in any similar 
historical inquiiy, collect and sift all the obtainable 
evidence of whatever sort. At times the evidence will 
consist of references in other books to the work in 
question ; sometimes of allusions in the work itself 
to historical events of known date ; oftener, and evi- 
dence of this third sort is least conclusive, and must 
be used with greatest caution, the argument must be 
based on the aesthetic qualities of the work itself, on 
metre, style, and general handling of the theme, which 
may indicate youth or maturity or decline of the poet's 
power. 



CHAUCER 15 

For a few of Chaucer's writings, as, for example, 
the Book of the Duchess, the Parliament of Fowls, the 
Legend of Good Women, it is possible to assign approx- 
imate dates with a good deal of certainty. From the list 
of his own works given by Chaucer in the Prologue to 
the Legend of Good Women, we learn that the writings 
there mentioned were composed at some time earlier 
than the Legend. For the rest we are forced to piece 
together every available shred of evidence, and construct 
hypotheses which shall be as plausible as may be. In 
the succeeding chapters of this book, where Chaucer's 
writings are considered separately, such evidence and 
plausible hypotheses as we possess regarding the dates 
of the several works are considered in detail. The reader 
will discover that the evidence is often of the flimsiest. 
It is only necessary here to sum up in the mass what 
maybe determined of the orderly development of Chau- 
cer's art on the basis of the information, more or less 
trustworthy, which we actually possess.^ 

When it is remembered that the date of Chaucer's 
birth cannot be later than 1340, and that the earliest 
of his works for which we can assign a date, the Book 
of the Duchess, was not written till 1369, we are at 
once impressed with the fact that Chaucer's art was 
very late in coming to maturity. For the Book of the 
Duchess, though by no means a contemptible work, 
bears evident marks of youth and immaturity. What 
was Chaucer doing between 1360 and 1369 ? To this 
period it has been customary to assign the Romaunt 
of the Hose, or so much of it as may be considered 

1 The best g'eneral study of Chaucerian chronology is the essay by 
J. Koch, The Chronology of Chmicer^s Writings, published by the Chau- 
cer Society, London, 1890. Earlier, and therefore less trustworthy, is 
Ten Brink's Chaucer : Studien ziir Geschichte seiner EntwicUung und zur 
Chronologic seiner Schriften, Miinster, 1870. Ten Brink's later views on 
the subject may be found in two articles Zur Chronologic von Chaucer^s 



(^ Jl 

16 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Chaucer's work ; and though this assignment has been 
questioned,^ the present writer is inclined to accept it 
as probable. In this period, too, we may assume, were 
written those ' balades, roundels, virelayes,' in praise of 
love, to which Chaucer refers in the Legend of Good 
Women, most of which have doubtless perished. To 
this general period belongs the A. B. C, and possibly 
also T/ie Book of the Lion and Orlgines wpon the 
Maiideleyne, lost works to which Chaucer refers at the 
end of the Barson's Tale and in the Legend of Good 
Women respectively. During this, the earliest period 
of his activity, the poet's models were for the most 
part French. The literary world in which he lived was 
a world of dream and lovely shadows, of abstractions 
ai.d graceful conventions, through which his guide was 
Guillaume de Lorris. The Booh of the Duchess is a 
pleasing and charming piece, but not a great poem ; 
excellent as is its poetic execution, there is little to 
suggest the Chaucer that was to be. Critics have been 
accustomed to call this period the period of French 
influence. Like most generalizations, the term is con- 
venient but dangerous. If we keep to the term, and 
for convenience' sake it is perhaps weU that we should, 
we must be careful to remember that the French 
influence upon Chaucer does not cease with the close 
of the so-called French period. The Prologue to the 
Legend of Good Women is thoroughly in the school 
of Guillaume de Lorris ; and in the Canterbury Tales 
the influence of the satirical method of Jean de Meun, 
the second of the two authors of the Roman de la Rose, 
is evident at every turn. It is the overwhelming pre- 

Schrifien, in Englische Studien, 17. 1-22, 189-200 (1S92). The opinions 
advocated by these earlier students of the subject have been consider- 
ably modified by later investigations as to the date of particular poems. 
1 Cf . below, p. 56. 



CHAUCER 17 

dominance of French influence in this early period 
which makes the term appropriate. 

In 1373 and again in 1378 Chaucer was sent on 
diplomatic missions to Italy, and came for the first 
time into vital contact with the great intellectual move- 
ment of the early Renaissance. He felt the power of 
Dante's divine poem ; he breathed the atmosphere of 
humanism which emanated from Petrarch and his cir- 
cle ; he found in Boccaccio a great kindred spirit, an 
author of keen artistic susceptibility, who in character 
and temperament had much in common with himself. 
He found in Italy not only a new set of models, supe- 
rior in art and in depth of thought to those of France ; 
he received as well a new and powerful intellectual 
stimulus, which set him to thinking more deeply on the 
problems of philosophy, and gave him a keener inter- 
est in the intricacies of human character. It follows 
naturally enough that the decade from 1375 to 1385 
was one of unwearied literary production. Despite his 
somewhat arduous duties as an office-holder in the 
civil service, he found time to produce a series of 
works which would alone assure him a permanent place 
in English literature. In the domain of philosophy he 
made his translation of Boethius on the Consolation 
of Philoso2)hy, one of the half-dozen most popular 
books during the whole of the Middle Ages, and one 
which entered very deeply into Chaucer's philosophy 
of life. Though he was already familiar with the 
doctrines of Boethius as they are represented in the 
Roman de la Hose, it is hardly to be questioned that 
the spur to work of this more serious character came to 
him from his Italian voyages. His newly found inter- 
est in human beings as individuals, in the more com- 
plex problems of character, bore fruit in his best 
sustamed and most perfect work, Troilus and Criseyde. 



18 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Here and in the Parliament of Fowls^ written a year 
or two later, Chaucer's power as a humorist springs 
into sudden maturity. To this same period belong, in 
all probability, the poems which we now know as the 
tales of the Knight, the Clerk, and the Man of Law. 
As the first period of the poet's activity has been called 
the period of French influence, so this second period 
has been called that of Italian influence. With the 
same proviso as before, that a great influence once felt 
never ceases to operate, this term also may be allowed 
to stand. The influence of Italy was surely preponder- 
ant ; Boccaccio was the great literary model ; the ideals 
which Petrarch had made current were the guiding 
principles of life and art. 

The transition from this second period to the third 
and last may be clearly seen in the House of Fame. 
Though the poem betrays evidently enough the influ- 
ence of Dante and of Boccaccio, and may consequently 
be assigned to the Italian period, the plot of it is, so 
far as we know, mainly original. The slighting esti- 
mate of Fame, that idol of all Italy, and still more the 
poet's deliberate decision to turn his back upon the 
House of Fame, to seek no part with the great philoso- 
phers and poets, to satisfy himself with the House of 
Rumor, where he can hear tidings of men and listen 
to stories true and false — all this may be taken as 
a declaration of independence, a determination to 
strike out for himself into a realm that should be more 
essentially his own. 

To the closing period of Chaucer's art belong his 
greatest work, the Canterhury Tales., begun soon after 
1885 and continued intermittently till his death, and the 
unfinished work which may be thought of as a sort 
of propaedeutic to this, the Legend of Good Women., 
which may safely be dated 1385 or 1386. If we speak 



CHAUCER 19 

of this as the period of Chaucer's originality, we must 
carefully define what we mean by the term original. 
For nearly every tale in the Legend and in the Booh 
of Canterbury a definite original may be found ; nor is 
the idea of either collection essentially Chaucer's own. 
Chaucer, like Shakespeare, seldom troubled himself to 
invent a plot. For a majority, perhaps, of the ideas to 
be found in these works Chaucer is indebted to ' olde 
bokes.' The striking difference between this period 
and the two which preceded is that no single influence 
is predominant, no single influence save that of the 
poet's own personality. From the Roman de la Hose, 
from Boethius, from Italy, from ancient Rome, Chaucer 
borrows at will ; but he has ceased to be a pupil, and 
has become a master. In a sense he is no longer influ- 
enced from without ; he has absorbed and assimilated 
and made his own. Thoughts which were once the 
thouahts of Boethius or Jean de Meun or Boccaccio 
are now his thoughts. He has included and tran- 
scended. 

Ainono^ the individual authors from whom Chaucer 
drew the material which he thus took up into himself, 
four stand out preeminent. They are Boethius, Jean de 
Meun, Boccaccio, and Ovid. From Boethius he drew 
the major part of his philosophy, his insistence on a 
stoical superiority to Fortune and her whims, his in- 
terest in the problem of foreknowledge and free-will, 
his platonic belief that true nobility springs only from 
greatness of soul. Wherever Chaucer moralizes or phi- 
losophizes, the chances are strong that a similar passage 
may be found in the Consolation of Philosophy} To 

1 It must be remembered that the doctrines of Boethius are largely 
reproduced in the Roman de la Roue, and that consequently it is often 
impossible to determine whether Chaucer is borrowing at first or at 
second hand. Since Chaucer was intimately acquainted with both 
works, the question is one of little moment ; for he cannot have failed 



20 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Jean de Meun, Chaucer's debt is manifold. From him 
he learned the highly effective satirical method which 
he uses in the Genei*al Prologue to the CanterhuTy 
Tales and in the prologues of the Pardoner and the 
Wife of Baih^ from him he borrowed many of his 
ideas, in particular those which are tinged with radi- 
calism or skepticism ; still more important, he seems 
to have acquired from Jean de Meun that attitude of 
mind, that habit of thought, which became an integral 
part of his nature — the habit of looking at life from 
the standpoint of comedy, that curious blending of easy 
tolerance and biting sarcasm, which is saved only by the 
evident kindliness of his soul from the charge of down- 
right cynicism. From Boccaccio and the Italian Renais- 
sance Chaucer received, as we have ali'eady seen, an 
interest in individual humanity, a new and higher stand- 
ard of artistic form, and a great intellectual stimulus, 
not to mention the plots of two of his most important 
compositions. To Ovid, to whose work the philosoi^hical 
eagle in the House of Fame refers as Chaucer's ' OM'ne 
book,' Chaucer was indebted largely and continuously. 
' Altogether,' says Professor Lounsbury, ' Ovid may be 
called the favorite author of Chaucer in respect to 
the extent to which the material taken from him was 
embodied in productions of his own, written at long 
intervals of time apart, and upon subjects essentially 
different.' ^ Though Chaucer knew Virgil, and was not 
unacquainted with other Latin literature, classical an- 
tiquity appealed to him most strongly in the pages of 
Ovid. While drawing from him stories and allusions, 

to recognize Boethius as the original source. He was probably not 
aware of the fact that the work of Boethius is little more than a com- 
pendium of the doctrines of earlier philosophers. 

' Studies ill Chaucer, 2. 251, 252. The quotation is from the chapter 
on ' Tlie Learning of Chaucer,' a chapter of which the serious student 
of Chaucer cauuot aiford to be ignorant. 



CHAUCER 21 

Chaucer must have learned also some of Ovid's ease 
and grace, his power of vivid description, his rich sen- 
suousness of color and form. 

Recognizing how great is Chaucer's debt to the work 
of those who went before him, one is tempted to ask 
what is left to Chaucer as his own. In one sense, little, 
in another sense, all. If originality be taken to imply 
newness, what was never known nor thought before, ori- 
ginal minds have been very rare in the world's history, 
and have seldom expressed themselves in literature and 
art. The artist is not properly an investigator, a dis- , 
coverer of truth; his function is rather to select and! 
assimilate, and by new combination of ideas or by new 
and higher expression, to present the truth with greater 
cogency and to commend it to the emotions of his audi- 
ence. He is, however, no mere purveyor of the truth ;j 
he, too, must be an original thinker, but original in 
the sense that he carries back the truth which he has 
learned to its origin, its fountain-head, in nature itself. 
Novelty is possible to very few ; originality is possible 
to many. It is not necessary that we should drink 
from a new river of truth, but that we should drink its 
waters at the fountain-head, the origo, unmixed and 
unsullied. When Chaucer retells Boccaccio's story of 
Troilus and his faithless love, he does not merely trans- 
late ; neither does he paraphrase and adapt. Accepting 
the plot of the Filostrato^ he creates the characters 
anew from his own independent knowledge of human 
nature, giving to them new sentiments, new motives, 
impelling them often to new actions, and consequently 
to new situations. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and 
Pandarus are as original, perhaps more original, than 
their prototypes in Boccaccio. So is it when he bor- 
rows a thought from Boethius or Jean de Meun. In 
this sense Chaucer is a great original poet ; in this 



22 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

sense, and in this sense alone, may we assert the ori- 
ginality of Shakespeare. If Chaucer's indebtedness 
seems greater than Shakespeare's, it is first because 
the range of his intellect is less universal, and secondly 
because he drew from a smaller number of sources. 
We of to-day draw our ideas from such a multitude of 
writers that our resultant philosophies are mosaics, 
wherein it is all but impossible to distinguish the origin 
of this bit and of that; Chaucer had relatively few 
sources from which to draw, and his indebtedness to 
each of these is consequently much larger. 

Having seen the principal sources whence the poet's 
ideas were drawn, and the process by which these 
ideas were made his own, it will not be very difficult to 
frame some general notion of his ideals and beliefs, of 
his attitude toward the world about him, of what may 
be called his philosophy of life. Not that Chaucer ever 
fashioned for himself a complete and consistent 'sys- 
tem ' of philosophy ; he was as far as possible removed 
from any purpose of deliberate didacticism ; he was 
conscious of no burning 'message' to be delivered 
through the medium of his art ; but it is none the less 
possible to gather from his works a fairly definite idea 
of his intellectual and spiritual constitution. 

If the distinction be indeed legitimate, Chaucer's 
mind is remarkable rather for its breadth than for its 
depth, for the extent of its interests rather than for 
the intensity of its convictions. If Chaucer is not a 
profound thinker, he is at any rate marked by an eager 
intellectual curiosity, an openness to ideas, which is 
evident at all periods of his life. In the domain of 
science one notices first of all his interest in astronomy 
and the related pseudo-science of astrology. His works 
abound iu allusions astronomical and astrological. Like 
Dante and Milton, he prefers to tell his times and 



CHAUCER 23 

seasons by the great clock of the starry heavens and 
by the calendar of the zodiac. So minute and definite 
are these allusions in the majority of cases that we 
must depend on the professed student of astronomy for 
their elucidation. From such elucidations we learn that 
the allusions are not only definite but accurate. The 
crowning proof of the poet's astronomical attainments 
is furnished by his Treatise on the Astrolahe, written 
in his later years for the use of ' litel Lowis my sone.' 
Though his acquaintance with physical science was less 
extensive, the discourse of the eagle in the House of 
Fame includes an admirable exposition of the theory 
of the transmission of sound ; and a similar perception 
of scientific principles, though with humorous applica- 
tion, is shown in the concluding episode of the Sum- 
vioners Tale. That Chaucer had delved somewhat 
deeply into the mysteries of alchemy is shown by the 
tale of the Canon's Yeoman. Still another topic, on 
the borderland of science, in which he betrays a lively 
interest is the cause and significance of dreams.^ 

In the realm of philosophy and metaphysic there was 
one problem which had for Chaucer a powerful fasci- 
nation, the problem of God's foreknowledge and the 
freedom of man's will. On this topic the disappointed 
Troilus argues with himself at weary length ; on this 
topic, and on the related topic of man's inability to 
choose for himself, Arcite discourses in the knight's 
Tale (A. 1251-1274) ; to the same topic the KnigMs 
Tale reverts near its close in a long speech by Theseus. 
Some years later Chaucer opened the question again, 
this time in playful mood, in the tale of the Nun's 

^ This interest, which Chaucer shares with many of his contem- 
poraries, is to be traced to the popularity of Macrobius's commentary 
on the Somniiim Scipionis of Cicero. For an account of this work, see 
below, p. G5. 



24 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Priest. Somewhat closely allied with this problem of 
foreknowledge and predestination is the equally insol- 
uble problem of the existence of evil in a world gov- 
erned by an all-powerful and benevolent God. It is 
this problem which troubles the faithful Dorigen in the 
Franklin'' s Tale, when she contemplates ' thise grisly 
feendly rokkes blake ' which line the coast of Brittany, 
and threaten shipwreck to her husband returning from 
over-seas (F. 8G5-893). With more of bitterness and 
less of faith, the woeful prisoner, Palamon, vexes the 
same baffling question in the Knight^ s Tale (A. 1303- 
1333) : — 

Th' answere of this I lete to divynis, 

But wel 1 woot, that in this world gret pyne is. 

Chaucer does not solve these questions — who indeed 
shall solve them ? — neither does he in his discussion 
of them pass much beyond his master Boethius. What 
is significant for our purpose is not his answers, for 
Chaucer is not primarily a philosopher, but the evi- 
dence which these discussions bear to his eager intel- 
lectual curiosity. 

In the poet's attitude towards these various interests 
of science and metaphysic, in his attitude towards all 
the interests of life, one plainly discerns a tendency 
towards skepticism. It is easy to exaggerate this tend- 
ency; and some of Chaucer's critics, among them Pro- 
fessor Lounsbury, have laid upon this trait an emphasis 
which seems to me undue. Nevertheless, the point is 
not one to be neglected. Interested as he is in astro- 
nomy, Chaucer had learned, at least at the time when 
he wrote the FrariMm'' s Tale, to distrust utterly the 
claims of astrologers and magicians. The magician of 
the story had a book, — 

Which book spak mnchel of the operaeiouns, 
Tonchiiige the eighte and twenty mansiouns 



CHAUCER 25 

That longen to the in one, and sioich folye, 
As in our dayes is nat loorth ajiye.^ 

That Chaucer did not take very seriously the claims of 
the alchemists, the Canon'' s Yeoman's Tale may bear 
witness. It must be remembered that the majority even 
of the more intelligent of Chaucer's contemporaries, 
and of his successors for several generations to come, 
believed firmly in both of these so-called sciences. Of 
the supernatural in myth and story, Chaucer makes, of 
course, large use in his works ; and usually he is artist 
enough to give to the supernatural the air of verisimili- 
tude ; but once, at least, when telling in the Legend 
of Dido of the supernatural mist by which ^neas was 
made invisible on his entrance into Carthage, he feels 
called upon to screen himself from any charge of undue 
credulity : — 

I can nat seyn if that it be possible, 

But Venus hadde him maked invisible, — 

Thus seith the book, withouten any lees.^ 

That Chaucer was capable of questioning some of the 
tenets even of orthodox Christianity, we shall see a little 
later on. 

Coupled with this tendency to skepticism is a notice- 
able tinge of radicalism. This, again, must not be exag- 
gerated ; Chaucer was no revolutionist ; he had no desire 
to subvert the existing order of things, either civil or 
ecclesiastical. But the speech of the transformed hag 
at the close of the Wife of Bath's Tale, and the balade 
of Gentilesse, betray a strong leaven of democracy, 
which is further evident in the lively and sympathetic 
interest in the lower classes shown not infrequently 
in the Canterbury Tales. Even more radical in its 

^ Chaucer expresses a similar opinion in his Treatise on the Astrolabe, 
2, 4. 58-Cl : ' Natheles, thise ben observauncez of judicial matiere and 
rytes of payens, in which my spirit ne hath no feith.' 

^ Leyend, 1020-1022. 



26 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

tendency is the discussion of celibacy, that cherished 
ideal of mediaeval Catholicism, found in the Wife of 
BatKs Prologue, and touched on again in the MonFs 
Prologue and in the Epilogue to the Nuri's PriesVs 
Tale. 

Though it has been a comparatively easy matter to 
discover Chaucer's attitude towai'ds many of the inter- 
ests of his day, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to 
determine with any exactness his attitude towards Chris- 
tianity and the Catholic Church ; for of his inmost con- 
victions and hopes Chaucer, like other modest men, 
speaks but seldom, and with reserve. We must not be 
misled, as were the reformers of Henry VIII's time, by 
the bitterness of Chaucer's attacks on the corruptions 
of the Church, into classing him with Wiclif as one of 
the forerunners of the Reformation. A contemporary 
writer of unquestioned orthodoxy, John Gower, ful- 
minates with equal bitterness, if with less effectiveness, 
against precisely the same abuses ; and Langland, who 
in his treatment of the clergy is at one v/ith Chaucer and 
Gower, is always a faithful son of the Church. From 
a great mass of independent testimony, we are compelled 
to the belief that Chaucer's picture of wholesale cor- 
ruption is but little overdrawn. It is entirely conceiv- 
able that Chaucer, like Gower, should, while remaining 
loyal to the Church, deplore its abuses. If Chaucer has 
shown us unworthy churchmen, has he not also painted, 
with all apparent sympathy, the portrait of an ideal 
pastor, the ' povre persoun of a toun ' ? As regards the 
vital doctrines of Christianity, Chaucer maintains a 
discreet silence, from which nothing can be inferred 
one way or the other. Professor Lounsbury has made 
much ^ of the opening lines of the Prologue to the 
Legend of Good Wo?nen : — 

^ Studies in Chaucer, 2. 512. The whole of the section entitled ' Cbau- 



CHAUCER 27 

A thousand tymes have I herd men telle, 

That ther is joye in heven, and peyne in helle ; 

And I acorde wel that hit is so; 

But nathelos, yit wot I wel also, 

That ther nis noou dwelling in this contree, 

That either hath in heven or helle ybe, 

Ne may of hit non other weyes witen. 

But as he hath herd seyd, or founde hit writen. 

This Professor Lounsbury considers a skeptical utter- 
ance. But taken in the light of its context, the passage 
is capable of an interpretation directly the opposite. 
Chaucer is arguing that we must give ' feyth and ful 
credence ' to books, even when they relate things be- 
yond the pale of our personal experience, just as we 
believe in the joys of heaven and the pains of hell, 
though no man living has ever tasted of either. Equally 
inconsequent is any argument drawn from the lines 
in the Knight'' s Tale which have to do with Arcite's 
death (A. 2808-2814) : — 

His spirit chaunged hous, and wente ther, 

As 1 cam never, I can nat tellen wher. 

Therfor I stinte, I nam no divinistre ; 

Of soules finde I nat in this registre, 

Ne me ne list thilke opiniouns to telle 

Of hem, though that they wryten wher they dwelle. 

Chaucer may surely decline to accompany his person- 
ages ' through the strait and dreadful pass of death ' 
without being accused of infidelity as to the life beyond. 
A somewhat stronger case may be made out for Chau- 
cer's doubt as to the efficacy of the absolution granted 
by the corrupt clergy of his day. After his merciless 
exposure of the methods of the Summoner in the Gen- 
eral Prologue, he says : — 

cer's Relations to Religion ' deserves careful reading. To the present 
writer Professor Lounsbury seems to have laid undue emphasis on 
Chaucer's chance remarks. 



28 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Of cursing oghte ech gilty man him drede — 
For curs wol slee, rigid as assoilling saveth. 

This is unquestionably an ironical utterance ; but one 
satirical remark must not be allowed to weigh too 
heavily, until it has been proved that Chaucer did not 
write the Parson's Tale. The doctrine of transub- 
stantiation, openly combated during Chaucer's lifetime 
by the reformer Wiclif, the poet nowhere questions. 

That Chaucer's mind betrays a tendency towards 
skepticism, or at least towards criticism, no one will 
doubt. His restless intellectual curiosity led him to 
question many things in heaven and earth ; and under 
the influence of the new spirit of the Renaissance, he 
began no doubt to exercise the ' right of private judg- 
ment.' But that he was and remained, in his beliefs 
and hopes, in all essentials, a Christian and a loyal 
Catholic, there is no reason to deny and no adequate 
reason to doubt. Of the essentially religious nature of 
his character such works as the Boethius translation, 
the Pai'soti^s Tale, the Lawyer's tale of Constance, 
and the Prioress's story of the ' litel clergeon ' furnish 
sufficient proof. The essential rightuess of his moral 
judgment no one familiar with his work can seriously 
doubt. Some of his work, dealing as it does with fla- 
grant immorality, is of questionable propriety; but with 
one or two exceptions, there is no attempt to show sin in 
other than its true light. Even these exceptions are to 
be explained as due to an excess of the spirit of comedy, 
rather than to a perverted moral judgment. In the 
little that we know of Chaucer's life, there is nothing 
that is inconsistent with the high virtues of ' trouthe 
and honour, fredom and curteisye,' or with the essen- 
tially Christian virtue, humility of heart. 

Right as are his moral judgments, quick as he is to 
perceive evil, Chaucer is never touched by the spirit 



CHAUCER 29 

of the reformer. He was capable, doubtless, of sympa- 
thizing with a Langland or a Wiclif, but he never set 
himself consciously to further their work. He sees the 
corruption of the Church, and clearly recognizes the 
evil of it ; but who is he to set the crooked straight ? 
There has been always, since the close of the Golden Age, 
evil in the world ; in one form or another evil will al- 
ways exist. It is so, apparently, that God made the world. 
If there is always evil, there is always also good ; the 
worst hypocrites in the Canterbury Tales have in them 
somewhat of good, something even lovable. The good 
is always admirable ; and the evil, though deplorable, 
is so very amusing. If this is not the best possible 
world, it is at least the best actual world, the world at 
any rate in which we must spend our threescore years 
and ten. Let us cleave to what is good, and laugh good- 
naturedly at what is evil. Above all, let us keep our 
hearts kind and tender, lacerated by no sceva indigna- 
tio at what we cannot cure. In this spirit of kindly tol- 
erance Chaucer looked at the world about him. To the 
ardent reformer such an attitude as this seems merely 
base and pusillanimous ; but in Chaucer it springs 
neither from weakness nor indifference, but from quiet 
conviction. The reformer is necessarily a protestant, a 
dissenter ; Chaucer is essentially a Catholic, his spirit 
is the Catholic spirit — perhaps it may be shown to be 
essentially the spirit of Christianity. To the man of 
truly humble spirit his own importance in the universe 
seems but small, his own exertions of slight avail. He 
will live his own life in the world as well as he can. 
Sedulously removing the beams from his own eyes, he 
will give to the world whatever of good he can, and 
see to it that his own small influence be an influence 
towards righteousness ; for the rest, he will leave the sal- 
vation of the world in the competent hands of the God 



30 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

who has created it. Chaucer has said all this himself 
in what is one of his noblest utterances, the Balade de 
Bon Conseyl, to which has been given the title Truth. 

Tempest thee noght al croked to redresse, 
In trust of bir that turueth as a bal: 
Gret reste staut in litel besinesse ; 
And eek be war to sporue ageyn an al; 
Stryve noght, as doth the crokke with the wal. 
Daunte thyself, that dauntest otheres dede; 
And trouthe sbal delivere, hit is no drede. 

That thee is sent, receyve in buxumnesse, 

The wrastling for this worlde axeth a fal. 

Her nis non boom, her nis but wildernesse; 

Forth, pilgrim, forth ! Forth, beste, out of thy stal 1 

Know thy coutree, look up, thank God of al; 

Hold the bye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede; 

And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede. 

That is the Catholic spirit ; that is the spirit that actu- 
ated Chaucer's life. Reformers may rail at this spirit 
as they please, but they cannot prove that it is weak 
or base. 

One other line from the balade entitled Truth, not 
included in the two stanzas given above, must be quoted 
for the light which it throws on Chaucer's temper. It 
is the line with which the poem opens : — 

Flee fro the prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesse. 
In the Prologue to Sir Thopas, it will be remem- 
bered, when the Host calls upon Chaucer to tell his tale, 
he accuses him of riding ever with his eyes upon the 
ground, and urges him to approach nearer and look up 
merrily : — 

' He semeth elvish by bis contenaunce, 
For unto no wight dooth he daliaunce.' 

Again, in the House of Fame, the eagle says to Chau- 
cer: — 



CHAUCER 31 

' And noght only fro f er contree, 
That ther no tj'ding comth to thee, 
^^ But of thy verray neyghebores, 

^f^^ That dwellen almost at thy dores, 

Thou herest neither that ne this.' 

The trait to which these passages all point is one highly 
characteristic o£ Chaucer's nature, a certain aloofness 
J from the world of men and things. Though keenly in- 
terested, he never seems to have felt himself a part of 
it. To the great peasants' revolt of 1381, the dramatic 
denouement of which in the streets of London he may 
well have witnessed with his own eyes, he refers but 
once, and then only playfully in three lines. ^ Though 
the battle of Poitiers was fought in Chaucer's lifetime, 
and though he himself had seen service in the fields of 
France, he never sings the glory of the English arms. 
Closely attached as he was to the royal court, he never 
speaks of the great diplomatic struggle which was being 
fought out between England and the Pope. Chaucer was 
living the while in another realm, the realm of fantasy. 
Not that he felt it necessary, like Wordsworth, to retire 
to the solitude of some Dove Cottage ; fond as he was 
of wandering in the fields of a May morning, Chaucer 
would have been quite miserable in Dove Cottage. He 
lived the major part of his life in London, and held 
important offices under the Crown. We have every 
reason to believe that he discharged the duties of these 
offices faithfully and efficiently. Neither did he close 
his eyes to things about him ; few English poets have 
observed the ways of men so minutely and so accurately 
as he. He could be a practical man of affairs, when that 
was necessary ; he was doubtless the most charming of 
companions over a glass of canary or old sack. But by 
temperament and choice he held aloof, not an actor but 
1 B. 4584-4586. 



32 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

a spectator, sympathizing but not sharing in the inter- 
ests of the world. He was in the world, but not of it ; 
and for this very reason, perhaps, he continues to live 
when the more active and conspicuous men of his age 
have become but a shadow and a name. 

The intellectual curiosity and openness of mind 
which mark Chaucer's attitude towards the world in 
general are equally evident in his more exclusively lit- 
erary activity. Never a profound scholar,* even when 
measured by the standards of his own day, he was, 
none the less, an omnivorous reader, and dipped more 
or less deeply into a great variety of books on widely 
diverse subjects. Professor Lounsbury has noticed the 
significant fact that a large number of his citations and 
allusions are drawn from the earlier pages of a work. 
In his reading, as in his writing, his curiosity was ever 
leading him into new courses ; after the first flush of 
interest was spent, he found it hard to hold himself 
down to the completion of a work begun with all enthu- 
siasm. In his mastery of foreign languages, too, the 
same trait is discoverable. Though he read Latin, 
French, and Italian fluently, he is often guilty, when 
held down to the stricter work of translation, of rather 
serious blunders. It is but fair to remember, however, 
that in the absence of adequate lexicons and gram- 
mars, strict verbal accuracy was not easy of attain- 
ment. Similarly, when we catch him at error in an 
allusion, it must be remembered that books were not 
then, as now, readily accessible, and that even a pains- 
taking scholar, which Chaucer certainly was not, was 
obliged to trust to memory much more than was al- 
ways safe. Boccaccio, who made much greater preten- 
sions to scholarship than Chaucer, was capable of such 

^ See Professor Lounsbury's cliapter on ' The Learning of Chau- 
cer,' Studies in Chaucer, 2. 109-426. 



CHAUCER 33 

a hybrid coinage as Filostrato^ the title of his Troi- 
lus romance, which he took to mean 'laid low by love;' 
and the ponderously learned Gower was not aware that 
Tullius and 'Cithero' were one and the same per- 
son.' In view of this last slip, it may surely be for- 
given to Chaucer if he similarly fails to recognize the 
identity of lulus and Ascanius.^ Chaucer's works 
abound, indeed, with inaccuracies and with shocking 
anachronisms; but so, for that matter, do the works of 
Shakespeare. Unfortunately, however, Chaucer has a 
thoroughly mediaeval love of parading his learning. 
It is one of the few serious blemishes in his art that 
he cannot refrain from long scholastic digressions, in 
which he heaps up authority on authority, and even 
suffers his personages to interrupt a passionate speech 
with an explanation of some obscure term needlessly 
introduced.^ 

But if Chaucer, despite his parade of learning, did 
not read with scholarly thoroughness, he read with the 
fine discrimination of the literary critic. Nothing can 
be more untrue to Chaucer than to speak of him, as was 
long the fashion, as an untutored genius, 'warbling 
his native wood-notes wild,' attaining his artistic effects 
by mere happy blunder or lucky intuition. He was a 
conscious critic of his own work and of the work of 
others. There is good reason to believe that he began 
the series of ' tragedies ' known to us as the MonTc's 
Tale^ in all good faith as a serious work of art ; but 
later, when he incorporated the unfinished series into 
the Canterbury Tales^ he had already recognized its 
essential literary badness, and through the mouths of 
the Host and the Knight conveys his own just criti- 

1 Confessio Amantis, 4. 2648 ; 7. 1588-1698. 

2 House of Fame, 177-178. 

8 Troilus and Criseyde, 5. 897-899. 



34 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

cism of the work. Similarly, lie was not long in dis- 
covering the inherent flaw in the scheme of the Legend 
of Good Women, and abandoning it as a mistaken 
experiment.^ The exquisite burlesque of /Sir Thopas 
and the Host's common-sense criticism thereon show 
that he had accurately discerned the literary extrava- 
gances of the widely popular romance of chivalry. 
Still higher proof of his fine literary taste is furnished 
by the process of selection and rejection, alteration and 
addition, with which he utilizes the works which serve 
him as sources for his compositions. 

The eclectic character of Chaucer's artistic procedure 
is strikingly shown in the variety of his experiments 
in versification. Metrically, to be sure, his range is 
very limited ; he employs normally only the iambic 
rhythm ; and, save in Sir Thopas,^ his measure is 
always either tetrameter or pentameter, though ample 
variety is attained by skillful handling of the pauses, 
by not infrequent substitutions of trochee or dactyl for 
the normal iambus, by large use of the feminine ending, 
and by various drawing out of the sense from one verse 
into another. It is in stanza form that Chaucer experi- 
mented widely. Nine tenths or more of his verse com- 
position is in one of three stanzas, — the octosyllabic 
couplet, characteristic of his earliest or French period, 
though reappearing in the House of Fame ; the rime 
royal, or seven-line stanza of Troilus and Criseyde, 
which belongs in general to the second or Italian period ; 
and the heroic couplet, in which was written his matur- 
est work. The last two of these stanzas, of which the 
first continued to be widely employed until Shake- 
speare's youth, and the second is rivaled only by blank 

1 Cf. below, p. 145. 

2 Further exception should, perhaps, be made of two stanzas in 
Anelida and Arcite (lines 272-280, 333-341), where the pentameter is 
broken up by internal rimes. 



CHAUCER 35 

verse in use and popularity, Chaucer was the first to 
introduce into English literature. In his mastery of all 
three he has never been surpassed. The minor poems 
display several other stanzas. If the rimes of the seven- 
line stanza are repeated through three or four succes- 
sive stanzas, we get the balade form used by Chaucer 
so effectively in Truths in Gentilesse, and in Lack of 
Steadfastness. In the A. B. G. and in the Monk's 
Tale appears an eight-line stanza, with rime-scheme 
ahabhcbc, which Chaucer apparently abandoned as less 
pliable than the seven-line stanza of the rime royal. 
This stanza, with the addition of a final alexandrine 
riming c, becomes the famous Spenserian stanza of 
the Faerie Queene. The Complaint to His Lady is 
little more than an exercise in versification. The poem 
begins with two stanzas of the rime royal ; then shifts 
into the terza rima of Dante, employed here for the 
first time in English verse, and ends in a ten-line 
stanza with rime-scheme aahaabcddc. The complaint 
inserted into Anelida and Arcite is a highly artificial 
arrangement of varying stanzas, with strophe and 
answering antistrophe. Still another artificial form 
borrowed from France is the triple roundel entitled 
Merciles Beaute, with which should be grouped the 
charming roundel introduced into the Parliament of 
Fowls. When it is remembered that in some of these 
artificial verse-forms it is necessary to find twelve 
words riming with the same sound, and that in a few 
instances the number is yet greater, Chaucer's mastery 
of the art of riming is apparent ; for seldom are we 
conscious of any constraint due to the exigencies of 
rime. 

No less remarkable is the breadth and variety of 
Chaucer's range, when his work is looked at from the 
standpoint of its content. Preeminently, of course, his 



36 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

fame rests on his power as a narrator, the power to tell 
an interesting story supremely well. His narrative 
method is characterized by straightforward directness 
and simplicity. Ordinarily, his stories have a single 
plot, one main thread of interest, which is taken up at 
the beginning and followed without interruption to the 
end. This is the method of Boccaccio and of mediaeval 
story-telling in general ; it is the method which Wil- 
liam Morris adopted in his Eartlily Paradise. The 
method of the modern writer of short stories is quite 
different from this, since his purpose is usually not so 
much to narrate a series of happenings as to create a 
single strong impression. His story will not begin at 
the beginning, and will seldom be conducted to its logi- 
cal end ; it will consist of a series of striking situations, 
presented not necessarily in their chronological order, 
with just so much of narrative as may be necessary to 
bind these situations together and make them under- 
/ standable. To this modern method Chaucer approxi- 
mates in the Pardoner'' s Tale, and in lesser measure 
in the Knight'' s Tale^ from which the reader carries 
away not so much the recollection of a narrative as the 
vivid memory of a few important scenes. Even when 
Chaucer clings more closely to the mediaeval method of 
direct narration, he achieves a somewhat similar effect 
by a subtle shifting of emphasis. If one compares his 
stories of Virginia and of Constance with their originals, 
it may be seen how, by the addition of a few skillful 
touches, the interest of narrative has been subordinated 
to the strong impression of a noble character. With 
what admirable skill Chaucer could handle a more com- 
plicated plot, in which two independent intrigues are 
made to furnish each the catastrophe for the other, 
may be seen in the conduct of the lliller^s Tale. 
1 Cf . what is said of these tales below, pp. 172, 227-230. 



CHAUCER 37 

No less brilliant is Chaucer's art in description. 
From the merry May morning, gay with singing of 
birds and sounding of the huntsman's horn, in the 
Book of the Duchess to the matchless series of por- 
traits in the Prologue to the Canterhury Tales^ the 
vividness and variety of Chaucer's pictures are un- 
surpassed. It were idle to enumerate them, for the 
reader's memory will call up a score of unforgettable 
scenes. What is the Knight'' s Tale but a splendidly 
pictured tapestry, full of color and motion? Particu- 
larly remarkable in these descriptions is their scope 
and breadth. There is much more of definiteness than 
of vagueness in Chaucer's descriptive method ; yet the 
mind is seldom wearied with a confusing catalogue of 
details. A few significant details give exactness to the 
picture, while suggesting a whole realm of things be- 
yond. It is as though a veil were suddenly withdrawn, 
letting the scene burst instantly into view. Lowell has 
called attention to this quality of suggestiveness in the 
description at the beginning of the Cleric s Tale : — 

Ther is, at the west syde of Itaille, 

Douu at the rote of Vesulus the colde, 

A lusty playne, habundant of vitaille, 

Wher many a tour and toun thou mayst biholde, 

That founded were in tyme of fadres olde, 

And many another delitable sighte, 

And Saluces this noble contree highte. 

Though not primarily a reflective poet, Chaucer is 
no less a master in this division of his art. Illustra- 
tions may be drawn from among his minor poems, 
and even more from among the moralizing passages 
of Troilus and the Canterhury Tales. The House of 
Fanie^ too, is essentially a work of reflection, though 
clothed in the form of an allegorical narrative. 

Unfortunately, Chaucer never wrote a drama; but 



38 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

that he might have been, had the dramatic form been 
developed in his time, one of the foremost of English 
dramatists, there can be no manner of doubt. A master 
of the art of characterization', skillful in his handling 
of dialogue, delighting in action, and keenly alive to 
the value of effective situation and climax, above all 
a master of constructive art, he is a dramatist in 
all but the fact. Evident in many of the Canterbury 
Tales^ and still more manifest in the story of the 
pilgrimage itself, this dramatic power reaches its full- 
est expression in Troilus and Criseyde, a work which 
is better dramatically than Shakespeare's play on the 
same theme. The five books into which the poem is 
disposed correspond accurately to the five acts of the 
drama ; the action rises to a climax in the third book, 
and falls to a catastrophe in the fifth. The poem con- 
sists of a series of dramatic scenes ; and the story is 
carried forward almost entirely by means of dialogue. 
The characterization of Criseyde is as subtle as any- 
thing in Shakespeare; and Pandarus is hardly less 
remarkable. In virtue of this work alone, Chaucer 
has an unquestionable right to be considered as the 
forerunner of the great dramatic literature of Eliza- 
beth and James. 

After considering the range of Chaucer's power in 
narrative and dramatic art, it is surprising to find how 
limited is his power as a lyrist. Though in the Pri- 
oress's Tale^ in the Lawyer's tale of Constance, and 
in the Booh of the Duchess there is a distinctly lyrical 
note, Chaucer seldom enters the domain of the lyric 
proper. The best of his short poems, such as Truth, 
Gentilesse, and T/ie former Age, are reflective rather 
than lyrical, while the love poems, though charming 
in their way, are too conventional and artificial to 
touch us deeply. Almost alone in its fresh spontane- 



CHAUCER 39 

ity, its authentically lyric quality, stands the roundel 
sung by the choir of birds at the end of the Parlia- 
ment of Foiols. Why this absence of lyric power, it 
is hard to say. In the age of Elizabeth dramatic and 
lyric went hand in hand. The fact must merely be 
recorded as one of the limitations in Chaucer's genius. 

The variety and breadth of Chaucer's art shows 
itself again in his wide register of tone. For illustra- 
tion one need not go beyond the limits of the Canter- 
hurij Tales. There is the romantic idealism of the 
luiighfs Tale and the high religious idealism of 
the Prioresses Tale side by side with the Zolaesque 
realism of the Miller and the Reeve. The Wife of 
Bath's prologue is brutally frank in its realism ; her 
tale is a graceful tale of faerie. The delightful extrava- 
ganza of Chanticleer and Partlet is introduced by a 
realistic genre painting of the poor widow's cottage, 
worthy of Teniers or Gerard Dou. In both of these 
manners Chaucer seems equally at home. The domi- 
nant tone in the Canterbury Tales., as in Chaucer's 
work as a whole, is that of humor; but Chaucer's 
humor is as protean in its variety as any other of his 
qualities. It ranges from broad farce and boisterous 
horse-play in the tales of the Miller and the Summoner 
to the sly insinuations of the Knight^s Tale and the 
infinitely graceful burlesque of Sir TlioiKis. Every in- 
termediate stage between these extremes is represented, 
the most characteristic mean between the two being 
found, perhaps, in the tale of the Nun's Priest. The 
only constant element in Chaucer's humor is its kind- 
liness, its healthiness, its spontaneous freshness. 

With a keen sense of humor is usually joined, as in 
Thackeray and Dickens, a deep susceptibility to the 
pathetic, and Chaucer is no exception to the rule ; but, 
unlike Dickens and Thackeray, he knows the delicate 



40 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

line which separates pathos from sentimentality, and 
over this line he never steps. Troilus as he eagerly 
watches for the returning form of Cressid, Arcite tak- 
ing his last leave of his kinsman and his love, Dorigen 
as she goes to keep her terrible tryst, Constance com- 
forting her little son, Griselda preparing for the wed- 
ding feast of the rival who is to supplant her, above all 
the matchless story of the murdered schoolboy singing 
his Alma Redemptoris — these show the touch of 
pathos in its purest form, and the list might be indefi- 
nitely extended. In any one of these instances a lesser 
poet would have become sentimental; this Chaucer 
never becomes. 

To the sublimer heights of tragedy, however, Chaucer 
does not ascend. Though the Pardoner's Tale moves us 
to tragic pity and fear, it does this rather by its ac- 
cessories, — the dreadful plague, the mysterious veiled 
figure, the suddenness of its catastrophe, — than by any 
working out of inevitable moral law. The catastrophe 
sj)rings, to be sure, from the evil character of the three 
revelers ; but the emphasis is on the external catas- 
trophe itseK rather than on the evil character. If the 
essence of tragedy is spiritual rather than physical 
catastrophe, the Pardoner'' s Tale must be called su- 
preme melodrama. So near to real tragedy Chaucer 
never again approaches. There was ample opportunity 
for tragic handling in Troilus, had he so wished ; but 
this opportunity was deliberately declined. There is 
tragedy enough latent in the poem as it is ; but over 
this the poet passes lightly, preferring to laugh at the 
comic spectacle of a brave and generous youth and 
a shrewd cynical worldling, duped, both of them, by a 
cunning but worthless woman. We must not assume 
that Chaucer was blind to the tragedy of life or inca- 
pable of viewing its problems seriously. 



CHAUCER 41 

What is this world ? what asketh men to have ? 
Now with his love, now in his colde grave 
AUone, withouten any companye. 

The author of these lines was surely capable of being 
serious ; there are few lines in our literature more preg- 
nant with the tragedy of life. But this note is never 
long sustained ; where possible, it is avoided altogether. 
Capable of seriousness, Chaucer has deliberately chosen 
to portray the world through the medium of comedy. 

I woot myself best how I stonde, 

are Chaucer's words when he refuses to compete for 
the favors of Lady Fame. I, for one, am ready to 
believe that Chaucer knew his own powers best, and 
am unwilling to quarrel with him for his choice of the 
comic spirit ; for comedy such as his constitutes a 

* criticism of life ' as true within its limits as that of 

* high seriousness ' and the ' grand style.' 

Of Chaucer's style it will not do to talk at great 
length, for its quality can be felt much better than 
it can be analyzed. It is so delicate, indeed, that any 
elaborate analysis seems in the nature of an imperti- 
nence. It is characterized preeminently by its simpli- 
city. Though for his metre's sake the poet affects a 
slight archaism in the preservation of the final e, which 
was already beginning to disappear, his words are the 
words of every-day life. His sentences are short and 
loose, simple in their structure, free from awkward in- 
versions and from any studied balance or antithesis. As 
his diction is simple, so is his thought. In his later 
work, at least, there is an almost complete absence of 
the strained conceits, the far-fetched metaphors, and 
elaborate puns, which mar much of Shakespeare's 
work ; and this is the more remarkable when one 
remembers Chaucer's reverence for the authority of 



42 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Petrarch. Once in the FranJclin^s Tale, he finds him- 
self betrayed into an overwrought metaphor : — 
For th'orisoute hath reft the Sonne his light. 

Instead of canceling the line, he lets it stand, and 
adds : — 

This is as muche to seye as it was night. 

To read Chaucer is to listen to the charming, gracious 
conversation of a cultured gentleman who is also a 
poet. At times his language is as terse and pregnant as 
any in Shakespeare. Such is the line in the KnigMs 
Tale which shows us 

The srayler with the knyf under the cloke. 

But ordinarily he has leisure to give his thought full 
expression. He has ' the power of diffusion without 
being diffuse.' His stories tell themselves away with- 
out apparent effort, even without apparent art, without 
hurry, but without delay. 

A povre widwe, somdel stope in age, 
Was whylom dwelling in a narwe cotage, 
Bisyde a grove, stonding in a dale. 
This widwe, of which I telle you my tale — 

There is nothing remarkable in these lines ; but they 
are the very essence of literature, and no one can resist 
their charm. 

If Chaucer's style is marked by naturalness and 
simplicity, let no one suppose that it is a careless style. 
Artless as his lines seem, they are full of that high- 
est art which effaces itself. In his perfect finish, his 
unassuming elegance, Chaucer is essentially Gallic, 
one may almost say Hellenic. With all his simplicity, 
there is a quiet energy, a sureness of touch, a delicacy 
of joerception, which betray the master mind. Above 
all, there is in Chaucer's style, as in the man himself, 



CHAUCER 43 

a sanity and poise, a calm equanimity, which render it 
] peculiarly grateful to the ears of our modern world, 
wearied with much wild talking. 

No one will pretend, I suppose, that Chaucer is a "poet 
of the first rank. He is not a great prophet like Dante, 
with a burning message which he must deliver ; only 
rarely does he move one's whole emotional and moral 
nature as does Shakespeare. Though sharing in the 
fresh spontaneity which makes the Homeric poems a 
perpetual solace, he has not Homer's majesty ; nor does 
he attain to the dignity and elegance of Virgil. As 
a comedian he will hardly rank with Cervantes and 
Moliere. In intellect and in art he is inferior to all 
these ; but among poets of the second rank his posi- v^ 
tion is high. In the list of English poets other than 
Shakespeare, Milton is the only one who may be held 
to surpass him ; and between two men so dissimilar in 
their powers one will hesitate to determine the preem- 
inence. 

The qualities which make for Chaucer's greatness 
have already been reviewed in the preceding pages, and 
will be considered again in more detail as they mani- 
fest themselves in individual works, in the chapters , 
which follow ; but the quality which distinguishes him ! 
preeminently is his sanity and poise. With the possible 
exception of Shakespeare, there is no English poet of 
power even commensurate with Chaucer's, who is so 
eminently sane. We are living in an age which is rest- 
less, in many respects unhealthy, insane. On one side 
of us is the dull sway of materialism, commercialism, 
money-getting ; on the other side we still hear the fran- 
tic protests of a Carlyle and a Ruskin, the revolution- 
ary rhapsodies of a Byron or a Shelley, we listen to the 
persistent self -analyses of a Wordsworth or a Coleridge, 
or to the beautiful but morbid imaginings of a Keats ; 



44 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

or, coming nearer to tlie present day, we hearken to the 
strange dreamiugs of a Maeterlinck or the unsparing 
iconoclasms of an Ibsen. I would not for a moment 
be thought insensible to the greatness of these men ; 
I insist merely that with all their varied greatness 
there is infused a strain which is morbid and unhealthy. 
The eighteenth century had sanity without poetry ; the 
nineteenth had poetry without sanity ; Chaucer, like 
the great Greeks, combined both. 

We turn to Chaucer not primarily for moral guid- 
ance and spiritual sustenance, nor yet that our emotions 
may be deeply and powerfully moved ; we turn to him 
rather for refreshment, that our eyes and ears may 
be opened anew to the varied interest and beauty of 
the world around us, that we may come again into 
healthy living contact with the smiling green earth 
and with the hearts of men, that we may shake off 
for a while 'the burthen of the mystery of all this 
unintelligible world,' and share in the kindly laughter 
of the gods, that we may breathe the pure, serene 
air of equanimity. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE / 

IK 

It Is thoroughly in accord with what we know of Chau- 
cer's innate modesty that his first serious undertaking 
in literature should have been a translation rather than 
an original work ; and surely no better exercise than 
that of translation could have been found to develop 
a technical mastery of poetic form. The poem which 
Chaucer chose to translate was the widely popular 
Roman de la Rose, a work which offered a broad and 
varied scope to the young poet's powers of expression, 
and was, moreover, thoroughly congenial to his tastes 
and sympathies. 

Though the Chaucerian Romaunt of the Rose ex- 
tends to the no mean length of 7698 lines, it reproduces 
less than a third of its French original, for The French 
the Roman de la Rose contains in Meon's ^°®™ 
edition 22,047 lines of octosyllabic couplets. Of these, 
lines 1-5169 and 10716-12564 alone are translated. 
But if the English translation is only a fragment of its 
original, Chaucer's familiarity with the whole poem, and 
the influence which it exerted upon him, are so great, 
that the poem in its entirety is of the first importance 
to the student of Chaucer's work. 

The Roman de la Rose is the work not of a single 
author, but of two authors, of two successive genera- 
tions, utterly unlike in their ideals and temperaments. 
Of the first of these, Guillaume de Lorris, whose work 
extends to line 4068, we know very little ; and for that 
little we are indebted to the second poet, Jean de Meun, 



46 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

who continued his work. From the statements of the 
youngei" author we are able to calculate that Guillaume 
must have been born about the year 1200, and that 
the composition of the poem must have fallen between 
the years 1225 and 1230. His work is supposed to 
have been terminated by his early death. Of the place 
of his birth and of his residence we do not know. The 
little town of Lorris is a few miles east of Orleans ; 
and Guillaume's name may indicate that as his birth- 
place ; but we cannot be sure. If, as seems probable, 
he was a clerk, his education may have been received 
either at Orleans or at Paris. His dialect shows that 
he lived in the north of France ; but in the absence 
of any critical edition of the Ronian^ it is impossible 
to be more exact. 

Of Jean de Meun, who forty years after Guillaume's 
death undertook the continuation of his unfinished work, 
we know somewhat more. Jean Clopinel was born at 
Meun-sur-Loire, and died before November 6, 1305, on 
which date his comfortable house in Paris was deeded 
to the Dominicans of the rue St. Jacques. Since it can 
be shown from internal evidence that his continuation 
of the Roman was written between 1268 and 1277, M. 
Langlois fixes on the year 1240 as the approximate date 
of his birth. From his own statement in another work 
we learn that his life was an honorable and prosperous 
one, and that it had been his fortune to serve ' les plus 
granz genz de France.' He was an excellent scholar, 
widely read in Latin and French, and the author of 
several works, among which may be mentioned a trans- 
lation of the Consolation of Philosoj)hy of Boethius, 
a book to which he is deeply indebted in the Roman 
de la Rose. 

Two men more dissimilar in character than the 
authors of the Roma^i it would be hard to find. 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 47 

Guillautne is essentially an idealist, a purist, cherishing 
the fair ideal of Middle Age chivalry, living in a world 
of dream and shadows. To him love is the great in- 
fluence which ennobles and purifies the human heart, 
woman is a superior, well-nigh perfect being, little 
short of the divine, in whose service man may well 
expend all in him that is best and highest. His poem 
is a love story and a courtly treatise on the art of love. 
Five years and more ago, he tells us, as he lay on his 
bed one May morning, he dreamed a wondrous dream. 
In this dream he wandered out through the flowering 
fields, with the birds singing all about him, and came 
at last to a great garden all walled about, the garden 
of love. In the midst of the garden, hard by the foun- 
tain of Narcissus, stands a goodly rose tree, on which 
grows a bud which the poet longs earnestly to pluck. 
This is the allegorical device by which the poet shadows 
forth his love for the lady of his desire. The porter 
at the gate of the garden is Idleness. The dramatis 
personce are, save the poet himself, such abstractions 
as Largesse, Fair- Welcome, Evil-Tongue, Jealousy, 
and Danger, or haughtiness. When allegory is but a 
literary device, it is always dangerous ; but Guillaume 
thought in terms of allegory, and his allegorical per- 
sonages, if shadowy, are none the less true and effec- 
tive. Guillaume de Lorris is not a great poet ; but he 
is a good poet, and one can hardly fail to enjoy the 
quiet loveliness of his work. 

Jean de Meun is of quite a different stamp, so differ- 
ent, indeed, that it seems a mere caprice that he should 
have undertaken the continuation of such a poem as 
the Roman de la Rose. If Guillaume de Lorris is a 
conservative and an idealist, Jean de Meun is a realist 
and a revolutionist. To him the chivalric ideal is mere 
nonsense. In his democratic creed noble birth is but an 



48 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

accident ; personal worth is the only patent of true no- 
bility. Woman is a vain and fickle creature, a snare for 
men's feet. Love is but a game played for the prize of 
sensual gratification. In crossing the line which divides 
the work of the two authors, the reader plunges into a 
totally different atmosphere. Jean de Meun has kept to 
the machinery of Guillaume's jjoem ; the same allegori- 
cal personages pass before us ; the quest of the rose still 
remains the ostensible theme of the poem ; but the poet 
uses the framework merely as a device for the introduc- 
tion of his own ideas. There are long digressions on 
various tojjics, philosophical and theological, wearisome 
because of their prolixity, but excellent in their rea- 
soning, and terse and effective in their diction. Thei*e 
are bitter tirades against the frailty of woman, and 
merciless attacks against the corrugation of the clergy. 
Jean de Meuu's method in his satirical passages is of pe- 
culiar interest to the student of Chaucer; for it is the 
very method so effectively employed in the Canterhury 
Tales. In the person of False-Seeming, one of the most 
masterful of Jean de Meuu's characterizations and the 
prototype of Chaucer's Friar and Pardoner, a friar 
himself is made to expose, proudly and boastfully, the 
iniquities of his order ; while in the person of the Du- 
enna, who becomes in Chaucer's hands the genial Wife 
of Bath, is exhibited all the sensuality and cunning 
craft which constitutes Jean de Meun's idea of woman. 
In Guillaume de Lorris one is conscious of a sweet 
and noble personality, coupled with a fairly true sense 
of artistic form and poetical expression. One cannot 
read a thousand lines of Jean Clopinel without realiz- 
ing that he has to do with a masterful intellect. His 
personality is not lovable, but commanding. Unques- 
tionably inferior to Guillaume in artistic form, — for 
his work seems often a mere hodge-podge of ideas, — he 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 49 

as unquestionably surpasses him in range and in intel- 
lectual scope. For the graceful delicacy of Guillaume's 
diction, Jean de Meun offers a nervous, incisive, yet 
polished style, which is as superior to that of Guil- 
laume as is Shakespeare to Spenser. 

This strange composite poem exerted in its own cen- 
tury, and in the two centuries following, an enormous 
influence on the literature of Northern Europe, and no 
inconsiderable influence south of the Alps. Its wide 
circulation is attested by the fact that nearly two hun- 
dred manuscript copies have survived to the present 
day, many of which are found in England and in 
Germany. It was early translated into Flemish and 
into Italian, while somewhat later appeared the Eng- 
lish version which is the subject of this chapter. In 
France it was kept before the public eye by its bitter 
antagonists no less than by its enthusiastic admirers. 
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that for two hun- 
dred years no important French author escaped its' 
influence. In England its vogue was little less exten- 
sive. Without its suggestion Chaucer would not have 
been Chaucer, and English literature would have fol- 
lowed a different channel. 

The reasons for this widespread popularity and far- 
reaching influence are not hard to fathom. The Ro- 
man is not, as is sometimes asserted, a great original 
creation. Guillaume did not invent the dream-vision 
form nor the use of allegory, any more than Petrarch 
invented the sonnet ; the revolutionary doctrines of 
Jean de Meun did not spring unbegotten from his 
own brain. Those who will take the trouble to read M. 
Ernest Langlois's monograph ^ on the subject will find 
that every significant feature of the poem is paralleled 
in earlier works. Th e great achievement of GuUlaume 
* Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose, Paris, 1890. 



50 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

de Lorris and Jean de Meun is that they assimilated 
and then crystallized into masterful poetic expression 
a literary form and a set of ideas which were already 
current and popular. Without Petrarch the sonnet 
might still have survived as a literary form; but it 
could hardly have achieved the great vogue which it 
attained through his authority. It is a general law in 
J literature that widespread and long-continued popu- 
larity is possible only when an idea already popular 
receives permanent expression at the hands of a master. 
The Roman de la Hose was immediately recognized 
as such a masterpiece, and became the medium through 
which was effectively transmitted an influence which 
might otherwise have spent itself ineffectually in a 
couple of generations. Another source of its wide ap- 
peal may be found in the fact of its dual and diverse 
authorship. The poem took its rise just before the 
dawn of the Renaissance. During the centuries which 
immediately followed, two tendencies, the mediaeval and 
the modern, were existing side by side. To those who 
clung to the old ideals, Guillaume de Lorris made a 
strong appeal ; while the free-thinkers of the Renais- 
sance could not but recognize a kindred soul in Jean 
de Meun. The poem was wide enough in its scope to 
appeal to all. Chaucer, for example, who exhibits in 
his own development the transition from the medi- 
aeval to the modern, was first attracted by Guillaume 
de Lorris, and only later felt the full influence of Jean 
de Meun. 

The chief interest of the Roman de la Rose for the 
modern student lies in this its historical significance as 
an expression of the varying ideals of the later Middle 
Ages ; but it has its absolute interest as well. Any one 
who will read the poem through, either in the French 
original or in the excellent English translation by Mr. 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 51 

F. S. Ellis/ will fiud many passages of vivid and charm- 
ing description, of keen analysis, of telling satire, of 
much vital human interest, and of true literary power, 
to repay him for the many hours which even a hurried 
reading will demand.^ 

The English translation of the Roman de la Hose, 
which is preserved in a single manuscript ^jig English 
in the Hunterian collection at Glasgow, was Version. 
first included among Chaucer's works in Thynne's edi- 
tion of 1532,^ and was until 1870 universally accepted 
as a genuine work of Chaucer. Since that date the 
question of its authenticity has been one of the most 
vexed problems of Chaucerian scholarship ; and even 
to-day scholars are not in full accord as to the solution. 

That Chaucer made a translation of some portion at 
least of the Roman, we know on Chaucer's own author- 
ity. In the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women 
(B version, 328-331), the god of love says to Chaucer : — 

For iu pleyn text, witliouten nede of glose, 
Thou hast translated the Romaunce of the Rose, 
That is an heresye ag-eyns my lawe, 
And makest wyse folk fro me withdrawe.* 

1 London, 1900. (The Temple Classics Series, J. M. Dent & Co. 3 
vols.) 

2 The best editions of the French text are those of M. M^on, Paris, 
1814, and F. Michel, Paris, 1864. A new edition, which will doubtless 
supersede these, is promised by M. Ernest Lang-lois. The best literary 
study of the Eoman is that by M. Langlois in the second volume of 
Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature J'ra7iqaise, published under the 
direction of M. Petit de Julleville, Paris, lSt»6. Shorter and less de- 
tailed, but highly suggestive, is the chapter devoted to the Roman in 
La LitUrature franqaise au Moyen Age, by Gaston Paris, Paris, 1S90. 
Reference has been made in a previous note to M. Lang'lois's Origines 
et Sources du Roman de la Rose, Paris, 1800. 

^ Thynne printed from a manuscript now lost, which, though some- 
what more accurate than the Hunterian MS., does not differ markedly 
from it. 

* Lydgate, moreover, in the Fall oj" Princes, mentions the translation 
amonsr other works of Chaucer : — 



52 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Two questions at once suggest themselves : Did Chau- 
cer ever complete his translation ? Is the fragmentary 
translation which we possess the work of Chaucer ? The 
first of these questions may be pretty safely answered in 
the negative. In the first place, the translation of so 
long a poem is a laborious and tedious task ; and Chau- 
cer, as we well know, was only too likely to weary of an 
undertaking before it was half completed. In the second 
place, had so popular a poet as Chaucer completed a 
translation of so popular a poem as the Roman de la 
Hose, it is highly improbable that the work would 
have been allowed to perish.* 

The first scholar to raise the second question, that 
as to Chaucer's authorship of the existing English ver- 
sion, was the late Professor F. J. Child of Harvard, 
in a communication to the Athenceum for December 3, 
1870 : ' I may add, that it will take a great deal more 
than the fact that the Romaunt of the Rose is printed 
in old editions, to make me believe that it is Chaucer's. 
The rhymes are not his, and the style is not his, unless 
he changed both extraordinarily as he got on in life. 
The translation is often in a high degree slovenly. The 
part after the break, from v. 5814 on, seemed to me, on 
a recent comparison with the French, better done than 
the middle ; and as the Bialacoil of the earlier portion 
is here called Fair-welcomyng,/>erAaps this part belongs 
to a different version.' 

Professor Child did not pursue the question any fur- 
ther ; and it was several years before any detailed argu- 

And notably [he] did his businesse 
By great auise his wittes to dispose, 
To traiiBlate the Romayiit of the Rose. 

Quoted by Skeat, 1. 23. 

^ It is, perliaps, -worthy of remark that the Romaunt of the Rose is not 
mentioued in the list of works of evil tendency which Chaucer repents of 
having written in the ' retractation' at the eod of the I'arson^s Tale. 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 53 

ment against the Chaucerian authorship appeared in 
print. It was nearly twenty years before the impor- 
tant hint contained in his last sentence received fur- 
ther elaboration. The first important document in the 
controversy appeared from the pen of Skeat in 1880/ 
in which the argument against Chaucer's authorship 
of the translation is based mainly on three grounds : 
(1) The presence in the translation of imperfect rimes, 
particularly the riming of words ending in -y with 
words ending in -ye, such as do not appear in the poet's 
unquestioned works ; (2) the occurrence of words which 
belong distinctly to a dialect more northern than that 
of Chaucer ; (3) differences in the vocabulary of the 
translation from the vocabulary of Chaucer.^ 

Though the argument against Chaucer's authorship 
of the translation did not pass unchallenged,^ nothing 
more of importance appeared till 1888, when it was 
clearly proved that Child had been right in suspecting 
that the portion of the translation which follows the 
break at line 5810 is not by the author of the earlier 
portion.^ 

^ Chaucer's Prioress''s Tale, etc., third edition, Oxford, 1880. The 
essay is reprinted in the Chaucer Society's vohime of JEssays on Chau- 
cer, pp. 439-451. That the question had already been discussed is shown 
by Thomas Arnold's communication to The Academy, July 20, 1878, 
pp. 66, 67, and Skeat's answer, The Academy, August 10, 1878, p. 14.3. 

^ Of these arguments, the third is least sound. Cf . an article by Pro- 
fessor Cook in Modern Language Notes, 2. 143-146 (1887). 

^ The most important dissenting voice was that of Fick in Englische 
Studien, 9. 161-167 (1886), who argued that the impure rimes and 
northern forms were to be explained on the ground that the translation 
was a work of Chaucer's youth. 

* F. Lindner in Englische Studien, 11. 163-173. The argument is based 
on rime, on the change from Bialacoil to Fair-welcomyng, noticed by 
Child, and on a number of false translations in the second part. Lind- 
ner is not ready to attribute either section to Chaucer, but favors the 
first rather than the second. His article is in many particidars invali- 
dated by the more thorough investigations of Kaluza. (See below.) In 
a review of Kaluza's work in Englische Studien, 18. 104-105, Lindner 



54 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

In the years 1892 and 1893 the controversy reached 
its culmination. In his Studies in Chaucer ^^ pub- 
lished in 1892, Professor Lounsbury combated stoutly 
and at great length the arguments against Chaucer's 
authorship of the whole translation ; and in the same 
year he was ably answered by Professor Kittredge.^ In 
the year following, 1893, the whole question was put 
upon a new footing, and all preceding arguments were 
in a measure invalidated by Professor Kaluza.^ It is 
unnecessary to reproduce here in detail Kaluza's argu- 
ments, which a serious student of the question will read 
for himself ; his conclusions alone need detain us. He 
has shown conclusively that the existing liommmt of 
the Rose consists, not, as Child guessed and Lindner 
proved, of two dissimilar fragments, but of three. The 
first (Fragment A), including lines 1-1705, contains 
nothing in rime, dialect, or vocabulary to prevent its 
attribution to Chaucer. The second (Fragment B), 
lines 1705-5810, is much less faithful in its following 
of the French text, and includes within its limits nearly 
all of the false rimes and northern forms which had 
led earlier scholars to reject the whole translation. 
Fragment C, lines 5811 to end, returns in method of 
translation and in style to the manner of Fragment A, 

gracefully admits his errors, and assents fully to Kaluza's position. 
See Skeat's communication to The Academy for September 8, 1888, 
pp. 153, 154. 

^ Vol. ii, pp. 3-166. Professor Lounsbury has never retreated from 
the position here maintained. He is, as far as the present writer knows, 
the only scholar who still asserts the Chaucerian authorship of the 
whole translation. 

"^ Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, 1. 1-65. See 
also Skeat in The Academy for February 27, 1892, pp. 20('), 207. 

^ Chaucer und der Hosenroman, Berlin, 1893. Kaluza had previously 
communicated his discoveries to Furnivall, who in turn communicated 
them to The Academy for July 5, 1890, p. 11. See also Skeat's commu- 
nications to the same paper for July 19, 1890 (pp. 51, 52), and August 
15, 1891 (p. 137). 



THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE 55 

and contains only a small number of questionable rimes 
and forms. Dr. Kaluza reaches tbe conclusion that 
Fragments A and C are the work of Chaucer, and that 
Fragment B is the work of an unknown poet of north- 
ern dialect, who, imitating as well as he could the man- 
ner of Chaucer, set himself to complete Chaucer's 
unfinished woi-k.* The main contentions of Kaluza's 
study have been pretty generally accepted; and most 
scholars now agree that Fragment A is by Chaucer, and 
that Fragment B certainly is not. About Fragment C 
there is still much dispute, Professor Skeat declining to 
accept it as Chaucer's.^ The present writer is inclined 
to agree with Kaluza in thinking it genuine.^ 

It may be held as fairly certain, then, that, intimate 
as was Chaucer's acquaintance with the whole of the 
lioman de la Hose, and great as was the influence it 
exerted upon him, he executed but a small part of his 
projected translation of the work, and that his unfin- 
ished version was later continued by some poet of 
Chaucer's school. 

It remains to aslr at what period of his career Chau- 
cer's fragmentary translation was made. While the 
whole of the existing translation was held as Chaucer's 
work, its imperfect rimes led students to attribute it 

^ In Essays on Chaucer, published by the Chaucer Society, pp. 675-683, 
Skeat assigns the dialect of Fragment B to ' some county not far from 
the Humber, as Lancashire, Yorkshire, or Lincolnshire.' The date of 
the fragment he thinks to be later than 1400 and earlier than 1440. It 
has recently been urged by J. H. Lange in Englische Studien, 29. 397- 
405 (1901), that the author of Fragment B is Chaucer's disciple Lyd- 
gate. The argument is plausible, but not conclusive. Skeat has shown 
(AthencBum, June 6, 1896, p. 747) that Lydgate was acquainted with 
Fragment A. 

2 Oxford Chaucer, 1. 1-20. 

^ The latest attempt to prove Chaucer's authorship for the whole 
translation is that of Miss Louise Pound in Modern Language Notes, 11. 
92-102 (1896). The argument, which is based on the sentence-length 
in Chaucer's genuine poems and in the Homaunt, is hardly convincing. 



56 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

to the earliest period of the poet's activity. When, on 
the other hand, the whole work was considered spuri- 
ous, this argument ceased to operate, and the fact that 
the Romaunt is mentioned in the Prologue to the 
Legend of Good Women in close association with 
the Troilus led Ten Brink to the conclusion that 
Chaucer's supposedly lost translation belonged to a 
period only slightly earlier than his Troilus.^ To 
this conclusion Kaluza also assents.^ Though the ques- 
tion probably is not capable of final proof, the present 
writer is inclined to hold to the earlier view, that Chau- 
cer's translation belongs to the period of his youth. 
Though the portions of the work which may be attrib- 
uted to Chaucer are of a high degree of excellence, 
easy and spirited,^ they have not the power of his 
maturer woi-k. The translation is a good one, but not 
a great one. There are, moreover, in Fragment C at 
least, a number of imperfect rimes that can be accepted 
as Chaucer's only on the assumption that the work is 
immature. Finally, it seems inherently more probable 
that an undertaking of this character should belong to 
the period of the poet's apprenticeship rather than to 
that of his developed art.'* The association of the work 
with Troilus may be sufficiently explained as due to 
the similarity in the spirit of the two works.^ 

1 History of English Literature (Eiig. trans.), 2. 76, 77 ; and Eng- 
lische Siudien, 17. 9, 10. 

2 Chaucer und der Rosenroman, 1, 2. 

3 The first 1G78 lines of the French poem are reprinted from Moon's 
edition in Skeat's Oxford Chaucer, 1. 93-104, parallel with Chaucer's 
version. The student is thus enabled to make liis own comparisons 
between original and translation. The English version is but 27 lines 
longer than the French. 

■* ISkeat, apparently, continues to regard the Romaunt as an early 
■work. Cf. the Oxfm-d Chaucer, 1. 11, 

^ For the date of the Romaurit, see also Koch's The Chronology of 
C/iUUcer's Wrilinys (Cliaucer Society), pp. 12-15. 



CPIAPTER IV 

THE MINOR POEMS 

TnouGn among the Minor Poems of Chaucer are num- 
bered many of his latest as well as of his earliest pro- 
ductions, it is convenient to treat of them together in 
a single chapter. Nor is the departure from the chro- 
nological method which such treatment involves with- 
out its compensating advantages ; for in their variety 
of theme and tone, and even more in their wide metri- 
cal range, they constitute an excellent introduction to 
Chaucer's longer and more sustained compositions. In 
the following pages the Minor Poems are considered 
severally in the approximately chronological order 
adopted in Professor Skeat's edition. 

I. AN A. B. c. 
Chaucer's A. B. (7., a 'song according to the order 
of the letters of the alphabet,' is merely a translation, 
as literal as the exigencies of rime and rhythm would 
permit, of a hymn to the Virgin included in La Pele- 
rinage de la Vie Humaine of Guillaume de Deguille- 
ville, ' a Cistercian monk in the royal abbey of Chalis,' | 
written about the year 1330. Of the date of Chaucer's 
translation we have no certain knowledge ; but from 
the choice of subject and the manner of execution, it 
is safe to infer that it is among the poet's earliest 
works. It is merely a meritorious essay in verse compo- 
sition. The introductory statement in Speght's Chau- 
cer of 1002, where the A. B. C. was first printed, 
to the effect that it was made, 'as some say, at the 



68 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Request of Blanch, Duchesse of Lancaster, as a praier 
for her priuat vse, being a woman in her religion very 
cleuout,' is not supported by any other evidence. The 
verse is iambic pentameter ; the stanza contains eight 
lines, with the rime-scheme ahabbchc. The stanza of 
Chaucer's original contains twelve lines of octosyllabic 
verse, with only two rimes. 

II. THE COMPLAINT TO PITY 

The love-lorn squire, Aurelius, in the Franklin^s 
Tale, tried to ease his heart by making ' manye layes, 
songes, compleintes, roundels, virelayes ; ' and, appar- 
ently, in his younger days, Chaucer had done the same. 
Whether the unhappy love expressed in the ' com- 
plaint' and described again at the beginning of the 
Book of the Duchess was a real and deep passion 
or not, we have no way of knowing. Don Quixote, 
when he would make himself a knight-errant complete, 
provided himself with a Dulcinea del Toboso whom 
he might serve as lady-love; and it is quite possible 
that when Chaucer would launch himself as a cotirtly 
poet, he found it expedient to do the same. Still we 
must not assume the truth of such a hypothesis merely 
because the expression of this love is clothed in arti- 
ficial and conventional forms. Personally, I find the 
idea of a hopeless love, protracted through eight long 
years, out of harmony with the eminent sanity of 
Chaucer's nature. But who shall say ? 

We do not know the date of the Comiilaint to 
Pity, nor do we know whether or not it was original 
with Chaucer.* It is a conventional love poem on the 
French model, and is in all probability one of Chau- 
cer's earliest extant works. It is interesting chiefly as 

1 Professor Skeat's attempt to find a parallel for the personification 
of Pity in the Thcbais of Statius seems unnecessary. 



THE MINOR POEMS 59 

being probably the earliest appearance in English verse 
of the seven-line stanza, with rime-scheme ahabbcc, 
known as the rime-royal, which was later used in 
Troilus and Oriseyde. 

/ 
III. THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS 

The Booh of the Duchess, or the ' Deeth of Blaunche 
the Duchesse,' as it is called in the Prologue to the 
Legend of Good Women, is the first of Date and 
Chaucer's poems to which a definite date s°'^^'=es- 
can be assigned. In September, 1369, died the Lady 
Blanche, daughter of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, and 
first wife of Chaucer's patron, John of Gaunt ; and soon 
after her death, we may suppose, was written the poem 
which celebrates her virtue and bewails her loss. John 
of Gaunt and his lady were both twenty-nine years old ; 
and if we accept the year 1340 as the approximate date 
of Chaucer's birth, this also was the age of the poet. 
Twenty-nine he was at least, perhaps older, so that if 
this be his first original work of any length, — and its 
immaturity lends credence to the belief, — Chaucer's 
genius was slow in its development. Keats, we remem- 
ber, was but twenty-six when death took him away. 

Chaucer's literary apprenticeship was worked out in 
the school of the Roman de la Rose, his translation 
of the poem being very likely his first serious venture 
into the field of letters ; and the Book of the Duchess, 
like other work of his earliest period, is strongly under 
the influence of the allegorical love poetry of France. 
From that source, directly or indirectly, comes the 
whole machinery of the poem, its dream and vision, 
its singing birds, its flowery meads ; from the same 
source are drawn some of the ideas also. Were not 
the walls of the chamber in which the poet dreamed 
that he awoke 



60 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Peynted, bothe text and glose, 
Of al the Roraaunce of the Rose ? 

Of the same school of poetry is the Frenchman, Guil- 
laume de Machault (1300?-1377), and from him, too, 
Chaucer has borrowed here and there.* Machault's 
Dit de la Fontaine Amoureuse, which Chaucer cer- 
tainly knew, contains a long paraphrase of the story 
of Ceyx and Alcyone; and it has been asserted that 
this suggested the Proem of the Book of the Duchess? 
It is quite likely that Chaucer did consult Machault's 
version of the story; but it is clearly demonstrable 
that he also went directly to Ovid, and that he is more 
indebted to the Latin than to the French. Though 
the general spirit of the Book of the Duchess is of 
the French school, its plot, if it may be said to have 
a plot, is Chaucer's own. Of its 1334 lines, not more 
than a hundred have been traced to a definite French 
original.^ 

It is possible that the story of Ceyx and Alcyone 
was originally an independent work. In the Prologue 
of the Man of Law's Tale, at any rate, we read that 

In you the he made of Ceys and Alcion; 

but this may very well refer to the Booh of the 
Duchess, which, as we know, was made in Chaucer's 
youth. 

It is as a work of the poet's youth, a mark from which 
one may measure his subsequent literary development. 
Literary that the Booh of the Duchess deserves at- 
^'^^- tention. Intrinsically its value is but slight. 

It is not lacking in beautiful and effective passages ; 

1 See Sandras, Euide sur G. Chaucer, 291-294. 

^ The significant portions of the Dit de la Fontaine Amoureuse are 
given by Ten Brink, Studien, 197-205. Ovid's version is found in Meta- 
morjihoses, 11. 410-748. 

^ Cf. Lounsbury's Studies in Chaucer, 2. 212. 



THE MINOR POEMS 61 

l)ut, taken as a whole, it furnishes but weary reading. 
Distinctly graceful and pleasing is the story of Ceyx 
and Alcyone, when judged purely on its own merits as 
an imitation of Ovid ; but so slight is its connection 
with the main theme of the poem, that it constitutes 
a serious breach of artistic unity. By far the most 
charming passage of the whole work is the account 
of the poet's sujiposed awakening, with the merry sing- 
ing of the birds without the pictured windows of his 
chamber broken by the sudden blast of the huntsman's 
horn, all the varied life and motion of the hunt, the 
flowers and trees and wild beasts of the greenwood. 
It is not till the lonely knight begins to speak that 
the poem sinks to its true level of mediocrity. Not 
only are his speeches intolerably long, they are also 
essentially artificial. If he may be forgiven his con- 
ventional diatribe against malicious fortune, and his 
strange conceit of the game of chess, features bor- 
rowed from Machault, it is hard to overlook his unin- 
termitted pedantry. He ransacks the treasure-house of 
classical antiquity, and the Bible as well, to furnish 
forth fit comparisons for his loss, and, not content with 
this, stops now and then to explain a more recondite 
allusion. He tells how he had made many songs to win 
his lady's love : — 

Althogh 1 coude not make so wel 
Songes, ne knowe the art al, 
As coude Lamekes sone Tubal, 
That fond out first the art of songe; 
For, as his brothers hamers ronge 
Upon his anvelt up and doun, 
Therof he took the firste soun; 
But Grekes seyn, Pictagoras, 
That he the firste finder was 
Of the art; Aurora telleth so, 
But therof no fors, of hem two. 



62 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

It is Chaucer, of course, and not the bereaved knight, 
who is thus jealous of his reputation for philological 
accuracy. ' But therof no fors, of hem two ; ' it is in 
either case a serious lapse from literary taste. Lapses 
of this sort Chaucer never wholly outgrew. 

In passing judgment so harshly on the long speeches 
of the knight, some exception must be made for the pas- 
sage in which he describes the charms, spiritual as well 
as physical, of the ' gode faire Whyte.' Of this Lowell 
has spoken as ' one of the most beautiful portraits of 
a woman that was ever drawn.' ' Full of life it is,' he 
continues, ' and of graceful health, with no romantic 
hectic or sentimental languish. It is such a figure as you, 
would never look for in a ballroom, but might expect 
to meet in the dewy woods, just after sunrise, when you 
were hunting for late violets.' ^ But even here one is 
tempted to cry out on the score of prolixity. 

Some attempt is made to create a sort of suspense by 
withholding till the very end the fact that the knight's 
loss of his lady is the irreparable loss of death; and 
after the long-drawn-out speeches of the poem, a dis- 
tinctly striking effect is produced by the abruptness of 
the end, with its utter restraint : — 

' She is deed ! ' ' Nay ! ' ' Yis, by my trouthe ! ' 
* Is that your los ? by God, hit is routhe ! ' 

I cannot agree with the majority of critics who see in 
this ending proof that Chaucer tired of his work and 
ended the poem hastily ; it seems to me rather a stroke 
of deliberate art. 

In its lack of good proportion and its frequent lapses 
in taste, in the occasional roughness of metre which sug- 
gests the earlier alliterative line, in its lack of humor and 
delicate irony, — for which, to be sure, there is little 
opportunity, — we see that the Booh of the Duchess 

^ Conversations on some of the Old Poets, p. 98. 



THE MINOR POEMS 63 

stands at the beginning of Chaucer's development. In 
its graceful treatment of nature, its well-managed tran- 
sitions, its skillful use of dialogue, in its portrait of noble 
womanhood and its occasional pathos, it gives promise 
of the splendid development to come. 

IV. THE COMPLAINT OP MARS 

The Complaint of Mars is a conventional poem, 
supposed to be sung by a bird on St. Valentine's Day, 
in which mythology and astronomy are curiously blent 
together to the greater glory of illicit love. There is 
nothing to indicate the date of its composition, nor 
have we any certain knowledge whether or not it was 
intended to celebrate an actual intrigue ; though the 
old copyist, Shirley, appended to his manuscript copy 
of the piece the statement that some men say that it 
was made about my Lady of York, daughter to the 
King of Spain, and my Lord Huntingdon, sometime 
Duke of Exeter. The lady named was sister-in-law to 
Chaucer's patron, John of Gaunt, while my Lord Hunt- 
ingdon afterwards married John of Gaunt's daughter, 
Elizabeth. Shirley further assures us in his heading to 
the poem that it was made at John of Gaunt's com- 
mand. The Complaint has little claim to attention save 
for the fact that a somewhat difficult nine-line stanza 
is handled with a good deal of skill. 

V. THE PARLIAMENT OF FOWLS 

On the twentieth day after Christmas, in January, 
1382, King Richard was married in the chapel of the 
palace at Westminster to the Lady Anne of 
Bohemia, a daughter of the Emperor Charles 
IV and a sister of Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia, ' who 
at this period had taken the title of Emperor of Rome.' 
Richard was but fifteen years old, and his bride was 



64 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

but a few months his senior. For upwards of a year, 
Froissart tells us, Richard had been in treaty with 
King Wenceslaus, and the Lady Anne had been pre- 
viously contracted to two German princes ; so that the 
course of this diplomatic courtship had not been a very 
smooth one. 

Though we cannot assert the fact with positive as- 
surance, it seems very probable that it is the events of 
this royal courtship which Chaucer celebrates allegori- 
cally in his Parliament of Fowls. The ' formel egle,' 
which Nature holds on her hand, — 

Of shap the gentileste 
That ever she among hir werkes foude, 
The most benigue and the goodlieste, — 

would then represent the Lady Anne. . The ' tercel 
egle,' 'the foul royal,' who declares his love for her, 
would stand for Richard, while the other two eagles, 
' of lower kinde,' would be the two earlier suitors. The 
year of respite which Dame Nature grants, in which 
the ' formel egle ' is to choose between her suitors, 
corresponds with the period over which the diplomatic 
negotiations were protracted. Chaucer is evidently cele- 
brating a courtship in high life, and no other court- 
ship of the period so well accords with the incidents 
of the poem. The maturity of Chaucer's literary art 
in the poem, furthermore, agrees very well with a date 
as late as 1382. That it cannot have been written 
later than 1385 is proved by the mention of it in the 
Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. It is not 
at all impossible that the delicate flattery of the Par- 
liament of Foivls may have been directly responsible 
for the favor which Queen Anne showed to Chaucer 
three years later. ^ 

Though its general form as a poem of the dream- 
1 Cf. p. 141. 



THE MINOR POEMS 65 

vision type associates the Parliament of Fowls with 
the essentially mediaeval, French models of 
Chaucer's earlier period, such as the Ho- 
maunt of the Hose, and though the conception of 
an assembly of fowls is probably of French origin, ^ the 
poem shows overwhelming proof of the influence of 
the new culture which came to Chaucer as a result of 
his Italian journeys of 1373 and 1378. 

After four introductory stanzas, Chaucer devotes fifty- 
six lines to a synopsis of Cicero's Somniuni /Scipionis, 
which he was reading before he fell asleep and dreamed 
his dream. This work, a part of the JDe Hejnihlica, 
was not known to Chaucer and to his contemporaries 
in its original setting, for the De Repuhlica was not 
recovered till a later date, but was preserved as an ex- 
tract in a copious conunentary of Macrobius, a gram- 
marian and philosopher of the fifth century. This book 
was a very popular one with Chaucer and with the 
Middle Ages in general, and exerted no small influence 
on the Divine Comedy of Dante. The extract from 
Cicero, if not the laborious commentary of Macrobius, 
is fully worthy of the popularity it achieved. 

In the section which follows on the synopsis of the 
Somnium Scipionis, the predominant influence is that 
of Dante, from whom the inscription over the gate 
to the garden of love is freely adapted; though one 
stanza, beginning with the line, — 

The wery hunter, slepinge in his bed, — 

is translated from the late Latin poet Claudian. For 
the description of the garden and its delights (lines 176- 
294) Chaucer is closely indebted to the Teseide of 
Boccaccio. It was at about this time, apparently, that 

1 As Skeat has noticed, one of the fables of Marie de France is en- 
titled ' Li parlemens des Oiseas por faire Roi.' Oxford Chaucer, 1. 75. 



66 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Chancer wrote his Palamon and Arcite, known to us 
as the Knighfs Tale ; and finding that the stanzas 
of the Teseide here utilized were not necessary for his 
longer work, he thriftily turned them to account in the 
Parliament of Fowls. 

The description of the Goddess Nature surrounded 
by all the birds of the air is adapted, as Chaucer him- 
self tells us, from the De Planctu Naturm of Alanus 
de Insulis, a Latin poet and divine of the twelfth cen- 
tury. In Alanus, however, the birds are merely depicted 
on the robe which Nature wears. As for the parlia- 
ment itself, with its long debate, which constitutes the 
real substance of the poem, that is, so far as we know, 
Chaucer's own original production. 

As the sources of the poem show a twofold influence, 
that of the departing Middle Age and that of the new 
Italian culture, so too in its literary workmanship one 
Literary ^^ay detect the transition from the more con- 
Art, ventional poetry of Chaucer's earlier period 
to the work of his maturer genius. Structurally consid- 
ered, the work is far from perfect ; for the real action 
of the piece does not begin till nearly three hundred 
lines have rolled melodiously by. Beautiful as is the 
description of the garden of love, its length is both 
relatively and absolutely extravagant. Quite unne- 
cessary to the action is the synopsis of the Somnium 
Sci2nonis with which the poem begins, an unfortu- 
nate bit of introductory machinery which Chaucer also 
employs, at greater length, in his earlier Book of the 
Duchess. 

It is not till Chaucer has finished his introductions, 
and has left his authors well behind him, that the con- 
ventional gives place to the natural, and the poet's 
genius plays freely. The graceful and charming conceit 
of Dame Nature on her hill of flowers, with all the birds 



THE MINOR POEMS 67 

about her come to choose their mates, is well executed 
and well sustained. If we fail to enter with much 
enthusiasm into the emotions of the three rival eaaies 
as they plead their amorous causes, we are at any rate 
highly entertained by the varying counsels of the four 
estates in this feathered parliament. 

The birds of prey, who constitute the peers of the 
realm, take the matter quite seriously. If necessary, 
tliey are willing to see in the dispute fit cause for war. 
The fowls of lower degree, the bourgeois birds who feed 
on worms, the mercantile birds who occupy their busi- 
ness in the water, those of agricultural pursuit who feed 
on seeds, care more for their own well-being and for 
the expeditious transaction of business than for any 
punctilio of honor. 

But she wol love him, lat him love another ! 

cries the unsentimental goose, as spokesman for the 
water-fowl, while the cuckoo, of the worm-eating estate, 
goes even further : — 

' So I,' quod he, * may have my make in pees, 
I recche not how longe that ye stryve ; 
Lat ech of hem be soleyn al hir lyve.' 

From these radical views the turtle dove, representing 
the more poetical class of those who feed on seeds, is 
inclined to dissent : — 

Yet let him serve hir ever, til he be deed, 

an opinion which the duck considers merely laughable. 
Though characterized quite humanly, Chaucer does 
not suffer us to forget that the parliament is only one 
of fowls, and the sudden ' Kek, kek ! kukkow, quek, 
quek' which breaks upon us serves as a delicious bit 
of humorous realism, after the passionate speeches of 
the three tercel eagles. As in its general structure the 



68 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Parliament of Fowls leads us to comparisons with the 
Book of the Duchess which preceded it, so in its treat- 
ment of birds who speak like men it leads us forward 
to the more finished art of the Null's Priest's Tale. 

VI. A COMPLAINT TO HIS LADY 

Chaucer's Complaint to his Lady is apparently no 
more than a series of experiments in verse form. Be- 
ginning with two stanzas of seven lines, it shifts into 
the ter^a rima of Dante, and thence into a complex 
stanza of ten lines, with rime-scheme aahaabccldc. This 
is the first appearance of the terza rima in English 
verse, and probably its only appearance until English 
literature was again Italianized in the days of Wyatt 
and Surrey. As Mr. Heath suggests, the poem should 
not be taken too seriously.^ It may have been written 
shortly after Chaucer's Italian journey of 1373. 

VII. ANELIDA AND AECITE 

The fragment of Anelida and Arcite consists of a 
Proem of three stanzas, twenty-seven stanzas of seven 
lines each of the ' Story,' followed by a Complaint in 
fourteen stanzas of very elaborate metrical construction. 
After the Complaint, the ' Story ' is resumed, but is 
broken off after a single stanza. Probably the work 
was never completed. 

In line 21 Chaucer gives as his sources ' Stace, and 
after him Corinne.' Stanzas 4-7 are indeed from the 
Thebais of Statins; but who 'Corinne' may be, we do 
not know, — very likely the name is one of Chaucer's 
sheer inventions, — nor do we know any source for the 
story. But for six stanzas of the poem (1-3, 8-10) 
a source is easily discoverable. They are taken from 
the first and second books of Boccaccio's Teseide, the 

1 Globe Chaucer, p. xxxvii. 



THE MINOR POEMS 69 

poem which served as the foundation of the Knight'' s 
Tale. Since stanzas from the Teseide are also found 
in the Parliament of Fowls and in Troilus^ it is nat- 
ural to infer that these three poems were written at 
about the same time, when Chaucer was busy with 
his Palamon and Arcite, later known as the KnigMs 
Tale ; that is, soon after the year 1380. 

Since the poem is a mere fragment, it is not possible 
to say much of its literary qualities, save to call atten- 
tion to the metrical skill and pleasing effect of the 
Complaint which is incorporated into it. Neither can 
we, while in ignorance of its source, venture to guess 
how the story would have been concluded. Though also 
a Theban at the court of Theseus, the Arcite of this 
poem has nothing to do with the Arcite of the KnighCs 
Tale. It is not impossible that Chaucer may have 
intended to celebrate some love story of the English 
court, and that being busy with the Teseide., he chose 
to shadow forth his real personages under names bor- 
rowed from the court of Theseus, inventing the name 
Cormne to increase the obscurity of his allegory. Frag- 
ment as it is, the piece gives unquestioned proof of 
Chaucer's power. 

VIII. Chaucer's words unto adam 

I know no better way to illustrate Chaucer's half-seri- 
ous, half -playful address to his copyist, than by quoting 
the words of Petrarch to a friend to whom he wished 
to send a copy of his own work on the Life of Soli- 
tude: ' I have tried ten times and more to have it copied 
in such a way that, even if the style should not please 
either the ears or the mind, the eyes might yet be grati- 
fied by the form of the letters. But the faithfulness 
and industry of the copyists, of whom I am constantly 
complaining and with which you are familiar, have, in 



70 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

spite of all my earnest efforts, frustrated my wishes. 
These fellows are verily the plague of noble minds. 
What I have just said must seem incredible. A work 
written in a few months cannot be copied in so many 
years ! The trouble and discouragement involved in 
the case of more important books is obvious. . . . Such 
is the ignorance, laziness, or arrogance of these fel- 
lows, that, strange as it may seem, they do not repro- 
duce what you give them, but write out something quite 
different.' ^ 

One may assume that the poem was written soon 
after Troilus and Boece, which it mentions in the 
second line. It is written in the seven-line stanza of 
Troilus. 

IX. THE FORMER AGE 

Poets have always been ready to sing the praises of 
long ago, and to Chaucer, living in an age of continual 
warfare, of corruption and oppression, the ' blisful lyf, 
paisible and swete, led by the peples in the former age,' 
may well have appealed very strongly. Doubtless he 
was wise enough and practical enough to see the fal- 
lacies of a general ' return to nature,' and to recognize 
that civilization has brought its blessings as well as its 
curses ; but he was also philosopher enough to see that 
' covetyse ' was really at the bottom of all the most 
serious evils of his day, as it is of our own. The poem 
is founded on the fifth metre of the second book of 
Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, and may pro- 
fitably be compared with Chaucer's prose translation 
of the same passage. About twenty lines of TJie For- 
mer Age are directly taken from Boethius, while the 
remainder are Chaucer's own expansion of the theme. 
There is nothing to indicate the date of its composition. 

1 Robinson anrl Rolfe, Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man 
of Letters, New York, 1899, pp. 27, 28. 



THE MINOR POEMS 71 

The stanza consists of eight lines, with rime-scheme 
ahabhchc. 

X. FORTUNE 

Because the poem called Fortune^ like The Former 
AgCy is little more than a restatement of the teachings 
of Boethius/ it must not be inferred that it is a mere 
literary tour de force. Indirectly at first through the 
Roman de la Hose, and later from the Consolation 
of Philosophy itself, Chaucer assimilated the philo- 
sophy of Boethius into his own soul, and made it the 
guiding principle of his life. Trite though they be, the 
thoughts expressed in Fortune are noble thoughts; 
and they are nobly spoken forth, not only with art, but 
with conviction. Fortune may govern all things with 
her fickleness, but ' man is man and master of his 
fate.' Not only may a true man defy Fortune, he may 
learn from her frowns which of his friends are friends 
indeed, which things in life are really enduring. Before 
the poem closes, its stoicism becomes a Christian stoi- 
cism. The very uncertainty of things terrestrial, which 
we, 'ful of lewednesse,' call Fortune, is but part of 
the scheme of righteous Providence : — 

The hevene hath propretee of sikernesse, 
This world hath ever resteles travayle; 
Thy laste day is end of myn iutresse: 
In general, this reule may nat fayle. 

Whether the poem was called forth by some partic- 
ular reverse of fortune or not cannot be known ; but 
the definiteness of the refrain, — 

And eek thou hast thy beste f rend aly ve, — 

and of the appeal to certain princes in the envoy, seems 
to suggest that this may have been the case. But who 

1 Cf. Boethius, Book II, Proses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, and Metre 1. Here 
and tliere the infiueuco of Boethius seems to be at second hand through 
the Roman de la Hose. See Skeat's notes, Oxford Chaucer, 1. 542-547. 



72 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

the friend may be, and what the occasion, it were idle 
to inquire. 

Apart from the nobility of its thought and the ele- 
vation of its language, the poem is remarkable for the 
metrical skill which it betrays. The poem consists of 
three balades and an envoy. Each of the balades has 
three stanzas of eight lines each, with the rime-scheme 
ahabbcbc, and the rimes are identical in each of the 
three stanzas ; so that the rime ' b ' is repeated twelve 
times, while the rimes ' a ' and ' c ' ap})ear six times 
each ; yet there is scarcely a line in which one is con- 
scious of any conflict between versification and thought. 

XI. MERCILESS BEAUTY 

In the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, it 
is said that Chaucer made many a hymn for love's holi- 
days, — 

That highten Balades, Roundels, Virelayes. 

The roundel is a highly elaborate verse form, borrowed 
from France. The stanza contains thirteen lines, with 
rime-scheme ahbabababbahb, in which lines one and 
two are repeated as lines six and seven, and are again 
repeated with line three to form the last three lines 
of the stanza. The three roundels of this poem and the 
one near the end of the Parliament of Fowls are the 
only roundels of Chaucer preserved to us. Jferciless 
Beauty is a charmingly graceful, but entirely conven- 
tional, love poem, after the French school, and perhaps 
imitated from a French original.* 

XII. TO ROSEMOUNDE 

The balade To Roseinounde was discovered by Pro- 
fessor Skeat in 1891, appended to a manuscript of 
Troilus and Criseyde in the Bodleian Library. This 

^ See Skeat, Oxford Chancer, 1. 548. 



THE MINOR POEMS 76 

few exceptions to this rule is the vigorous balade, with 
its envoy to King liichard, entitled Lack of Stead- 
fastness. Covetise and the love of meed, the ' lust that 
folk have in disscnsioun,' the decay of virtue and of 
mercy — these are the evils which are bringing the 
world to naught ; and in this opinion Chaucer is at one 
with Langland, with Wiclif, and with Gower. 

To assign even an approximate date for the composi- 
tion of the poem is very difficult. In the Tanner manu- 
script of the minor poems it is headed with the words : 
' Balade Royal made by oure laureal poete of Albyon 
in hees laste yeeres.' Following this hint, Chaucerian 
scholars have generally assigned it to the years between 
1393 and 1399, during which Richard succeeded in 
alienating the loyalty and affection of most of his sub- 
jects. Mr. Pollard, however, suggests, with a good deal 
of reason, that from a dependent of the court such 
advice to his sovereign would have been prudent only 
at an earlier period, in 1389 perhaps, ' when the young 
Richard was taking the government into his own hands, 
and throwing over the tutelage of his guardian uncles 
with the support of all his people's hopes.' ^ 

Professor Skeat asserts that the general idea of the 
poem was taken from Boethius, Book II, Metre 8 ; but 
the indebtedness, if any, was very slight. The poem is 
essentially original. The metre is the same as that of 
Truth. 

XVI. ENVOY TO SCOGAN 

The date of the playful Envoy to Scogan may, 
perhaps, be determined by the allusion in the sec- 
ond stanza to ' this deluge of pestilence,' which has 
been interpreted as a reference to the unusually heavy 
rains which, according to Stowe's Annates, fell in the 
autumn of 1393. ' Such abundance of water fell in 

^ Preface to the Globe Edition, p. xlix. 



76 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

October, that at Bury in Suffolke the church was full 
of water, and at Newmarket it bare downe walles of 
houses, so that men and women hardly escaped drown- 
ing.' ^ This deluge, Chaucer suggests, was due to the 
tears of Venus shed over Scogan's impiety in love. The 
date 1393 would agree, moreover, with the closing 
stanza, in which Chaucer speaks of himself ' in solitarie 
wilderness ' at the mouth of the Thames, that is at 
Greenwich, whither he had been dispatched in 1390 on 
a commission to repair the banks of the river. That 
the poem was written in Chaucer's later years is evi- 
dent from his humorous mention of those ' that ben 
bore and rounde of shape,' in the number of whom he 
includes himself. 

Of Scogan we know little. He is probably the 
Henry Scogan, Squire, who was later tutor to the sons 
of Henry IV. In a balade of his own, written. Professor 
Skeat thinks, ' not many years before 1413,' Scogan 
refers to Chaucer as ' my maistre Chancier,' and pro- 
ceeds to quote entire Chaucer's balade of Gcntilesse. 
There are six stanzas and an envoy, all in the seven- 
line stanza. The rimes in each stanza are different. 

XVII. ENVOY TO BUKTON 

The date of the thoroughly characteristic Envoy 
to Bukton is determined by the allusion in line 23 
to the undesirability of being taken prisoner in Fries- 
land, whither a company of English was dispatched in 
August, 1396, to the aid of William of Hainault.^ A 
late date is further indicated by the reference to the 
Wife of Bath. Of Bukton we know only that a Peter 
de Buketon was the king's escheator for the County of 

^ Oxford Chaucer, 1. 557. 

^ See Froissart's Chronicles, Book IV, chap. 78. In the preceding 
chapter we read that ' The Frieslanders are a people void of honor 
and understanding, and show mercy to none who fall in their way.' 



THE MINOR POEMS 77 

York in 1397. Apparently, Bukton was meditating a 
second marriage. Chaucer's sound advice on the sub- 
ject, which seems to be at least half serious, need not 
be taken as proof that his own marriage had been par- 
ticularly unhappy. It is clear, however, that Chaucer, 
now a widower, had no intention of falling again into 
' swich dotage ' if he could help it. There are three 
stanzas and an envoy of eight lines each, with rime- 
scheme ahabhchc. 

XVIII. THE COMPLAINT OF VENUS 

The Complaint of Venus consists of three bal- 
ades, loosely joined together, and supplemented by an 
envoy. As Chaucer himself tells us in the envoy, the 
balades are translated from the French of Sir Otes de 
Graunsoun, a poet of Savoy, contemporary with Chau- 
cer. As may be learned from a comparison with the 
French text, which is printed in Skeat's Oxford Chau- 
cer^^ the translation does not ' folowe word by word,' 
but is rather free. Since this complaint is associated 
in many copies with the Complaint of Mars, it has 
been assumed that the princess addressed in the envoy 
is the Princess Isabel of Spain and Duchess of York, 
whose love is celebrated in the earlier piece. If this 
be true, the date of composition will fall between 1390 
and 1394 ; for in the latter year Princess Isabel died, 
and in the envoy Chaucer speaks of himself as already 
dulled by old age. The poem, which is of the conven- 
tional type, is chiefly interesting for its elaborate rime- 
scheme, admirably handled. Each of the three balades 
consists of three eight-line stanzas, riming abahbccb, 
with repeated rimes. The envoy has ten lines, riming 
aabaabbaah. 

^ 1. 400-404, See also tbe articles on Graunsoun by Dr. A. Piaget, 
who first discovered the French originals, in Bomania, 19. 237-259, 403- 
448. 



78 THE POETRl HAUCER 

XIX. THE COMPLAINT Ol :!ER TO HIS EMPTY 

PUKSiii 

This delightful poem, which with delicate humor 
applies the conventional language of amorous poetry 
to an empty purse, is probably among Chaucer's latest 
compositions. The envoy, at any rate, addressed to 
Henry IV as ' conquerour of Brutes Albican,' cannot 
have been written earlier than September 30, 1399, 
when Parliament formally acknowledged, by ' free elec- 
cioun,' Henry's right to the throne. It is, of course, 
possible that the preceding stanzas had been written at 
an earlier time. It is pleasant to know that this deli- 
cate appeal for help met with almost immediate reply. 
On October 3 Chaucer received an additional pension 
grant of forty marks from the royal treasury. There are 
three seven-line stanzas, with repeated rimes, and an 
envoy of five lines, riming adbba. 

XX. PROVERBS 

The two Proverbs attributed to Chaucer by the man- 
uscripts are not of sufficient value to merit any discus- 
sion. Each proverb contains four octosyllabic lines, 
riming ahab. 

XXI. AGAINST WOMEN UNCONSTANT 

Though there is no sufficient external evidence to 
prove this poem one of Chaucer's, it is so thoroughly 
Chaucerian in manner, and withal so charming and 
graceful, that one is strongly inclined to think that the 
manuscripts and the early editions are right in asso- 
ciating it with his genuine work. The idea of the poem 
and its refrain are from the French of Machault, an 
author with whom Chaucer was thoroughly familiar. 
The metre is Chaucer's favorite seven-line stanza, with 
repeated rimes. 



THE MINOR POEMS 79 

XXII. AN AMOROUS COMPLAINT 

As in the case of the preceding poem, there is no 
satisfactory evidence that An Amorous Comjjlaint is 
by Chaucer, though it is certainly in his manner. The 
poem has not sufficient excellence to make the question 
an important one. The seven-line stanza is employed. 

XXIII. A BALADE OF COMPLAINT 

This poem, like the preceding, is of the conventional 
erotic type. It occurs in but one manuscript, and is not 
there attributed to Chaucer. Though superior to An 
Amorous Comiilaint in art, it is not a poem which we 
need consider very seriously. There are three seven- 
line stanzas, without repetition of rime. The acciden- 
tal recurrence of the c rime of the first stanza as the 
a rime of the second is a metrical blemish which 
may be taken as an argument against its Chaucerian 
authorship. 

XXIV. WOMANLY NOBLESSE 

This poem, which is found in a single manuscript, 
was first printed by Professor Skeat in The Athenceum 
for June 9, 1894. If not deserving of the high praise 
bestowed upon it by Professor Skeat in the first flush 
of discovery, it is yet a charming and graceful bit of 
conventional love poetry. The rime-scheme is highly 
elaborate, but three rimes appearing in the entire 
piece. There are three stanzas of nine lines each, rim- 
ing aahaabhaa^ with repeated rimes, and an envoy of 
six lines riming ahahaa^ in which the same rimes again 
appear. The a rime is therefore repeated twenty-two 
times. It should be noticed, however, that Chaucer 
has prudently chosen very easy rimes. 



CHAPTER V 

BOETHIUS AND THE ASTROLABE 

BOETHIUS DE CONSOLATIONE PHILOSOPHIE 

During the whole extent of the Middle Ages there 
was no single work, save the Bible itself, which ex- 
The erted so wide and continuous an influence on 

Origmai. ^j^g thought of Europe as the dialogue of 
Boethius on the Consolation of JPhilosophy. In 
England its influence may be traced from the very 
dawn of our literature ; for the moralizing interpola- 
tions in Beowulf are in several instances to be traced 
to this source, and the De Consolatione was among 
the works which the great Alfred gave to his counti-y- 
men, translated into their own speech. Chaucer, as has 
already been seen, was permeated through and through 
with the teachings of Boethius, and his contemporaries 
felt this influence as strongly. What is true of Eng- 
land is true also of France and Italy and Germany. 
The direct influence of Boethius, moreover, was supple- 
mented by an indirect influence, exerting itself through 
the channels of other books, notably of the Roinan 
de la Rose. Through this channel, not improbably, 
Chaucer first met the doctrines of Boethius ; and it is 
not impossible that the idea of Chaucer's translation 
was first suggested by a couplet of the Roman : — 

'T would redound 
Greatly to that man's praise who should 
Translate that book with masterhood.' 

1 Ellis's translation, 11. 5344-5346. 



BOETHIUS AND THE ASTROLABE 81 

Jean de Meun, at any rate, followed his own advice, 
and made a translation of the book into French. 

The work fully deserved the popularity it attained, 
both in virtue of its inherent excellence and charm, 
and in virtue of the fascinatingly romantic life of its 
author. Additional authority was given to it by the 
tradition, now strongly questioned but never satisfacto- 
rily refuted, that its author was a Christian, and by 
the erroneous belief that he gave his life, a martyr for 
the true faith. Two or three centuries after his death, 
he was canonized as St. Severinus. 

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was born be- 
tween the years 475 and 483 a. d., probably later than 
480, and died in 524, his life falling in the exciting days 
of Odoacer and Theodoric. His family was one of high 
standing, which had for six centuries held office in the 
public service ; his father, who died in the philosopher's 
boyhood, had been prefect of the city, prsetorian pre- 
fect, and consul. Boethius married the daughter of his 
kinsman and guardian, Symmachus, a senator, and him- 
self sat in the Senate. In the year 510 he was elected 
sole consul through the favor of Theodoric. In 522 
the philosopher's two sons were made consuls together. 

Though participating in affairs of state, Boethius's 
highest efforts were given to his books. His educa- 
tion was of the best, and his wide attainments included 
a knowledge of Greek. ' He translated the works 
of Pythagoras on music, of Ptolemy on astromomy, of 
Nichomachus on arithmetic, of Euclid on geometry, of 
Archimedes on mechanics. Finally, he sought to bring 
the whole of Greek speculative science within the range 
of Koman readers ; and though he did not live to see 
the attainment of his ambition, he managed to give to 
the world in something less than twenty years, of which 
several were absorbed in the discharge of public duties, 



82 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

more than thirty books of commentary on, and trans- 
lation of, Aristotle.' ' 

From this life of distinguished service, Boethius was 
snatched by a sudden tragic catastrophe. The Senate 
was suspected by Theodoric of a treasonable intent 
to restore the ancient liberties of Rome ; and Boethius 
was chosen as the one to bear the full brunt of the royal 
displeasure. Out of the mouths of notorious false wit- 
nesses, as Boethius insists, he was convicted of treason, 
was imprisoned at Pavia,and, after a long imprisonment, 
was put to death. It was during this period of impris- 
onment that he wrote the Consolation of Philosojjhy. 

This, the latest and greatest of Boethius's writings, 
is a dialogue between the author and the goodly lady 
Philosophy, in alternating sections of prose and verse, 
wherein are discussed those great problems of human 
life which were brought vividly to the author's con- 
sciousness by his sudden and overwhelming misfortune, 
coming as it did close on the heels of his highest pros- 
perity. In briefest outline, the argument runs as 
follows : As Boethius bewails in prison the wretched- 
ness that has come upon him, suddenly appears to him 
the majestic figure of Philosophy. ' When all the 
universe is ordered by God,' the prisoner asks, ' why 
should man alone wander at will ? ' Philosophy, in her 
reply, asserts the absolute omnipotence of God (Book I). 
It is not right to blame Fortune for our woes, for none 
of the gifts of Fortune are really valuable. Fortune 
really benefits man only when she frowns upon him, 
thus teaching him what is the true good (Book II). 
What, then, is this true good ? It must include within 
itself all the partial goods for which various men strive ; 

1 H. F. Stewart, Boethius, an Essay, Edinburgh and London, 1891, 
p. 26. This volume of 279 pages may be most enthusiastically recom- 
mended to any one who wishes to know more of Boethius and of his 
philosophy. 



BOETHIUS AND THE ASTROLABE 83 

and this absolute and perfect good, the sum of all par- 
tial goods, is God himself. Since all men instinctively 
seek happiness, and since happiness consists only in the 
true good, all men naturally seek God (Book III). 
But if God is the supreme good and is omnipotent, why 
do the wicked flourish ? To this world-old question Phi- 
losophy answers in the spirit of Plato, that the wicked 
are not really powerful, that properly they do not even 
exist at all. They are no part of God, and God alone 
really exists. God, in his omnipotence, rules the world 
by his providence. Fate being merely his minister, the 
actual working out of his providence. Chance does not 
exist at all (Book IV). But if God's providence rules 
all things, what room is left for the free will of man? 
To God, who is the only eternal, superior to the acci- 
dent of time, all things, past, present, and future, lie 
open in an ' everlasting now ; ' and all these things, 
being patent to his foreknowledge, have been ordered 
by him into a divine harmony. But to man, living 
under the condition of time, seeing only the past and 
present, blind to the future, there is at the moment a 
real freedom of choice. God foresees, but does not pre- 
destine ; yet, since his foreknowledge is infallible, he 
overrules, not the choice, but the consequences of the 
choice. Thus the freedom of man's will is not inconsis- 
tent with God's overruling government (Book V). 

The philosophy of the Consolation^ though not 
untouched by Christian influence, is essentially pagan, 
an eclectic blending of Plato (and the Neo-Platonists) 
with Aristotle and the Stoics. Boethius is indeed the 
' last of the Romans.' Noble and exalted as is the 
spirit which informs the dialogue, the consolation sought 
and received is not the consolation of the Christian ; it 
is not a matter of faith, but of reason. It is curious 
that the subtle theological intellect of the Middle Ages 



84 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

should have numbered its author among the 'noble 
army ' of Christian martyrs and saints. 

Though the original suggestion may have come, per- 
haps, from the couplet of the Roman de la Hose 
The Trans- quoted abovc, it was from Chaucer's Italian 
lation. journeys, and from the intellectual stimulus 

to more serious literary labor derived from them, that 
the impetus came which set him to the task of trans- 
lating the Consolation of Philosophy into English. 
The precise date of the translation, however, we do not 
know. It is included in the list of the poet's works 
given in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Wo- 
men, and must, therefore, be assigned to a date earlier 
than 1386. It probably falls later than the second 
Italian voyage of 1378. Because of the close associa- 
tion of the translation with Troilus and Oriseyde,^ it 
has been assumed that the two works were executed 
at about the same time, that is, about the year 1380. 

Chaucer made his translation directly from the Latin, 
using a manuscript supplied with numerous explanatory 
glosses, which he translated and incorporated into his 
text. There is no adequate support for the assumption 
frequently made ^ that he availed himself of the French 
translation attributed to Jean de Meun. Chaucer prob- 
ably read Latin as easily as he read French ; though 
his lack of any accurate scholarly acquaintance with 
Latin syntax is proved by not infrequent blunders, 
some of them rather serious.^ As for the style of the 
translation, Chaucer is never at his ease in prose com- 
position. ' We can here see as clearly as in any work of 
the Middle Ages what a high cultivation is requisite 
for the production of a good prose. -■ Verse, and not 

1 Cf . below, p. 91. \ 

^ Globe Edition of Chaucer, p. xl. \ 

^ See Stewart, op. cit., pp. 222-225, and the Oxford Chaucer, 2. xxiv- 
xxvii. ' 



BOETHIUS AND THE ASTROLABE 85 

prose, is the natural vehicle for the expression of every 
language in its infancy, and it is certainly not in prose 
that Chaucer's genius shows to best advantage. The 
restrictions of metre were indeed to him as silken fet- 
ters, while the freedom of prose only served to embar- 
rass him ; just as a bird that has been born and bred 
in captivity, whose traditions are all domestic, finds it- 
self at a sad loss when it escapes from its cage and 
has to fall back on its own resources for sustenance. 
In reading " Boece," we have often, as it were, to pause 
and look on while Chaucer has a desperate wrestle with 
a tough sentence ; but though now he may appear to be 
down, with a victorious knee upon him, next moment he 
is on his feet again, disclaiming defeat in a gloss which 
makes us doubt whether his adversary had so much the 
best of it after all. But such strenuous endeavor, even 
when it is crowned with success, is strange in a writer, 
one of whose chief charms is the delightful ease, the 
complete absence of effort, with which he says his best 
things. It is only necessary to compare the passages of 
Boethius in the prose version with the same when they 
reappear in the poems, to realize how much better they 
look in their verse dress. . . . It is to be regretted that 
Chaucer did not do for all the metra of the " Consola- 
tion " what he did for the fifth of the second book. A 
solitary gem like " The Former Age " makes us long 
for a whole set.' ^ 

A TREATISE ON THE ASTROLABE 

An astrolabe is ' an obsolete astronomical instrument 
of different forms, used for taking the altitude of the 
sun or stars, and for the solution of other problems in 
astronomy.' Chaucer's Treatise is an attempt to ex- 
pound ' under ful lighte rewles and naked wordes in 
1 F. Stewart, op. cit., pp. 227, 228. 



86 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

English,' the uses of the instrument and the elements 
of astronomy and astrology, for the benefit of ' litel 
Lowis my sone,' who had attained the ' tendre age of 
ten yeer.' As outlined in the Prologue, the work was to 
have consisted of five parts ; but of these only the first 
and part of the second were completed. As the ' yeer of 
oure lord 1391, the 12 day of March ' is twice used ^ as 
an example in the ' conclusions ' of Part II, it is reason- 
able to assume that the year 1391 is the date of com- 
position. Chaucer makes no claim to originality in his 
work : ' I ne usurpe nat to have founde this werk of my 
labour or of myn engyn. I nam but a lewd compilatour 
of the labour of olde Astrologiens, and have hit trans- 
lated in myn English only for thy doctrine ; and with 
this swerd shal I sleen envye.' Professor Skeat has 
shown that the ' old astrologien ' from whom Chaucer 
has drawn the great bulk of his material is a Latin 
translation of a treatise by Messahala, an Arabian 
astronomer who flourished towards the end of the eighth 
century, entitled Compositio et Operatio Astrolah'ie. As 
the tables were to be calculated ' aftur the latitude of 
Oxenford,' it has been assumed that little Lewis was 
a student in the Oxford schools ; beyond this we know 
nothing whatever about him, and it is not unlikely 
that he may have died before reaching manhood'. Since 
the work has no literary value save that of clear expo- 
sition, and since the modern reader is little likely to 
attempt its perusal, it is not necessary to discuss it 
further, except to call attention to the charming char- 
acter of the introductory sentences addressed by the 
author to his little son.^ 

1 2. 1. G and 2. 3. 18. 

2 The treatise has been edited by Mr. A. E. Brae, London, 1870, and 
ag-ain in 1S72 by Professor Skeat for the Chaucer Society. Skeat 'a 
observations are repeated, in condensed form, in the Oxford Chaucer, 
3. Ivii-lxxx. 



CHAPTER VI 

TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 

Of all the works which belono^ to Chaucer's second I 
period, in which the influence of Italy is preponderant. ' 
none is so characteristic of his genius as Troilus and\ 
Criseyde. In mastery of constructive art, in its spirit 
of dramatic objectiveness, above all in its psychological 
portrayal of complex individual characters, it breathes | 
the spirit of the Renaissance, and must be considered I 
the forerunner of the great Elizabethan drama. In some 
ways it is Chaucer's masterpiece ; for it is the only 
work of large dimensions, requiring a sustained effort 
of the poetical imagination, which the poet brought to 
completion. It is not, however, a poem which appeals 
strongly to the modern reader at a first perusal. Con- 
sidering its great length, the work is deficient in action ; 
though the background is filled with a number of minor 
characters thoroughly well portrayed, the vital interest 
centres in three persons, and events happen very slowly. 
Moreover, the very nature of the story, as conceived 
by Chaucer, prevents us from entering into intimate 
sympathy with any of the dramatis personce. Troilus 
alone is possessed of really admirable qualities ; and 
with his extravagances we are, as Chaucer intended j 
we should be, frequently disgusted. Finally, it cannot \ 
be denied that the manner is profuse to the point of 
prolixity. 

To read the poem aright, one must approach it in 
the spirit in which Chaucer approached it, looking not 
for action and rapid development of plot, but delight- 



X 



88 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

ing in keen, minute, humorous portrayal of character. 
It is with this single aim of character analysis that 
Chaucer has allowed the action to move slowly, and 
has permitted the speeches to prolong themselves, 
often to weary length. When the reader has grasped 
the underlying purpose of the poem, and has allowed 
himself to be fascinated by the baffling problems of 
character which it presents, he will cease to be impa- 
tient at the slowness of its progress or bored by the 
prolixity of its speeches, and will look eagerly in every 
stanza for subtle revelations of character and motive. 
■'^Though the poem would probably be more effective 
had it been somewhat condensed, it is none the less 
true that from beginning to end there is hardly a 
stanza which may fairly be accused of irrelevancy. 

Only less remarkable than its keen analysis of char- 
acter is the constructive art which the poem displays, 
an art which is in the highest sense of the word dra- 
matic. This aspect of Troilus and Criseyde has been 
presented with admirable discernment by the late Pro- 
fessor Price of Columbia, and with the reader's per- 
mission I shall quote at some length from his essay.* 

' Chaucer, in this poem, is dramatic, not because he 
allows action to predominate or run riot in his work, 
but because he deduces action, with profound psycho- 
1 logical skill, from the working of emotion. He is 
i dramatic because he makes his characters live before 
us, in their feeling and their thought, by minute and 
delicate touches of observation, with almost perfect 
dramatic force. He is dramatic because, with intense 
(realism of effect, he has made each spoken word of 
each character, and each action of each character, how- 

^ ' Troilus and Criseyde, a Study in Chaucer's Method of Narrative 
Construction,' Publications of the Modern Language Association of Amer- 
ica, 11. 307-322 (1896). 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 89 

ever trivial in itself, spring as inevitable necessity, by 
force of the circumstances that he has invented, from 
the soul of the character that he has imagined. And, 
in the highest sense of all, Chaucer in this poem is 
dramatic, because, in tracing the emotional life of 
his chief characters, he has led that play of passion to 
its final expression in definite action, because he has 
created a definite dramatic problem and a definite 
dramatic solution, and because he has bound all the 
parts of the action together, with unsurpassable dra- 
matic skill, into a definite dramatic unity. . . . 

' Chaucer, I find, has arranged all the action into 
a sequence of fifty (50) scenes. In connecting these 
scenes, he makes use of link-passages that are either 
his own reflections on the story, or else the points 
of narration or description that are needful for the 
understanding of the purely di-amatic parts. All the 
fifty scenes are essentially dramatic. In some, in- 
deed, as, for example, the scene of the opening action 
in the temple, or the dinner scene in the palace of 
Deiphobus, or the supper scene in the palace of Pan- 
dar, with the pouring of the rainstorm that forces 
Criseyde to spend the night in such deadly peril, 
Chaucer so far indulges his imagination as to give us 
the loveliest pictures of the environments of action. 
But, in general, the mere romance of external situa- 
tion is indicated very briefly, and all the force of the 
scene is expended upon the play of emotion, as re- 
vealed in the speeches and behavior of the acting per- 
sons. In their emotional character, these fifty scenes 
render almost every phase of human feeling. In many 
there is the exquisite tone of high comedy ; so, for 
example, the scene in which the stiff fingers of Troi- 
lus are moved to compose his first love letter, and 
the tricks by which Pandar wheedles Criseyde into 



X 



90 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

receiving and answering it. And tlien the tone of com- 
edy is kindled by the touch of intense feeling, and 
made serious by the anguish of suppressed emotion ; 
so the great scene in which heart-broken Criseyde, 
masking her own grief, entertains her lady friends, 
and listens to their gossip, at what may be called a 
Trojan afternoon tea. But in mauy scenes there is 
the complete relinquishment of all comic effect, and the 
complete attainment of the most passionate emotion. 
The scene, for example, in which Criseyde yields her- 
self, little by little, to the passion of Troilus, and the 
piteous scenes in which, under the pressure of hostile 
influences, she falls a prey to the artful and unscrupu- 
lous seductions of Diomede are, in their revelation of 
human feeling, of the highest dramatic force. Each 
scene in its own place has, with one exception, its 
own special fitness, its own inevitable function. Each 
one, in its proper sequence, is firmly knit with the past 
and with the future of the story. And, in their inces- 
sant shifting of emotional tone, they prove the power 
of Chaucer to deal, in dramatic fashion, with all the 
range of human feeling, with all the aspects of human 
life.' ' 

For the date of Troilus and Criseyde we have but 

slight and unsatisfactory evidence. That it was written 

before 1386, the date of the Legend of Good 

Date of ' IP 

composi- Women^ we know from the reference to it 
*'°°' in that work. Since in the House of Fame 

Chaucer determines to desist from the pursuit of Fame, 
by which we may understand the production of pre- 
tentious works in the Italian manner, it may be as- 
sumed that Troilus is earlier than the House of Fame. 

^ Professor Price finds that of these fifty scenes, thirty-two are con- 
ducted by means of dialogue, nine are soliloquy or monologue, only 
two are trio scenes, while seven introduce a larger group of speakers. 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 91 

From the fact that Troilus is mentioned among the 
famous lovers in the Parliament of Fowls^ it has 
been argued, rather inconsequently, that Troilus is 
earlier than the Parliament (1382), From its subject- 
matter the poem cannot have been written earlier than 
the first Italian voyage of 1373 ; probably it belongs 
after the second voyage of 1378. A date not far from 
1380 would well satisfy the conditions, for the work is 
one which shows Chaucer's power in full maturity. Be- 
cause of the large indebtedness of the poem to Boethius, 
and because in the lines to Adam Scrivener the two 
works are named together, it has been thought that 
Troilus and the Boethius translation were executed at 
about the same time.^ 

' The Middle Age is a great big child, and like all 
children is continually asking for new stories. Its story- 
tellers go for their material to all sources ; The Troy 
for all are in their eyes of equal value.' The ^^'"'y- 
words of M. Joly in the introduction to his edition of 
the Roman de Troie explain well the immense popu- 
larity of such story-tellers as Boccaccio and Chaucer, 
and show the attitude of mind in which we moderns 
must approach their work. In another place he says : 
' The Middle Age has no notion of chronology. This 
is one of the characteristics of childlike peoples: all 
that they can do is to distinguish between yesterday 
and long ago. The Arab not only cares little for the 
dates of history, he does not even count the days ; time 
is nothing to him. So too the peasant can form for 
himself no idea of degrees of antiquity ; he only knows 
that it is " very old." Indeed, he recognizes but two 

1 Dr. Tatlock's contention (Modern Philology, 1. 317-329), based on 
the reference in Gower's Mirour de l^Omme to the geste of Troilus and 
' la belle Creseide,' that Troilus was written earlier than 1377, is not 
ponvincing. 



92 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

dates, the present and the past ; and all past times are 
of the same value ; they blend together in the same 
remoteness and the same haze of obscurity.' 

Of the many sources from which the Middle Age sat- 
isfied its thirst for stories, three stand out preeminent. 
There is first the ' matter of France ' with its heroic 
tales of Charlemagne and Roland ; there is again the 
'matter of Brittany' with its romances of the Table 
Eound ; and lastly, the source with which we are imme- 
diately concerned, 'the matter of Rome the Great.' By 
this last phrase we are to understand, of course, not 
merely Rome, but the whole field of classical antiquity, 
— the wars of Alexander, the tale of Thebes, and above 
aU, the ' tale of Troy divine.' 

To understand the great popularity of the Trojan 
story in the Middle Ages, we must take into account 
first of all a strange belief held as literal truth of his- 
tory by the various peoples of Western Europe. To 
them the tale of Troy was not merely a thoroughly 
good story of battles long ago, fought by uncouth war- 
riors in an uncouth land ; it was portion and parcel of 
their own heroic past. Hector and Troilus and Priam 
were not foreigners and strangers, but of their own kith 
and kin ; for were not the Franks descended from one 
Francio, a prince of Troy ? did not the ' veracious ' 
Geoffrey declare that the Britons took their name from 
an ancestor Brito, or Brutus, who led a band of Tro- 
jans to the shores of Albion? So, too, the Norse chron- 
iclers assure us that the great Odin is no other than 
Priam, and that Asgard itself is but another name 
for Troy. This strange belief, quite possible of accept- 
ance in an uncritical age to which all past history was 
wrapped in an undistinguished haze of antiquity, is 
easily explained. Virgil had given supreme literary 
expression to the legend which carried back the history 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 93 

of Rome to the flight of Trojan ^Eneas. Rome had been 
the great mistress of the world, and her glories, though 
faded in fact, still lived in the imagination of men. 
There stood the great iinfaded fact of the Roman 
Church ; there lived the ideal of a Holy Roman Empire 
embracing all Christendom. Whence came the pre- 
eminence of the Roman name? To an a^e which 
thought much of noble descent the answer was inevit- 
able : from her heroic ancestry. If we barbarians of 
the North are to be a great nation, we too must con- 
trive to find an ancestry from Troy, and claim kin with 
the great men of Rome. A little ingenious etymolo- 
gizing, plausible enough to an age quite innocent of 
linguistic science, supplied the missing link ; and the 
siege of Troy becomes the first chapter of our national 
history. 

The child's love of a story and the patriot's desire to 
celebrate the glories of his race gave birth to a large 
number of ' histories ' or romances, — the terms are 
interchangeable, — many of them of appalling length, 
which have as their theme the war of Troy. It is the 
purpose of this section to outline the course of devel- 
opment of the Troy story until it reaches its most per- 
fect literary treatment in the Troilus and Criseyde 
of Chaucer. 

A modern author who should wish to write of Troy 
would turn first of all to Homer ; but in the Middle 
Ages Homer was little more than a name. To say, as 
has been said, that from the fourth century to the four- 
teenth the poems of Homer were unknown in West- 
ern Europe is probably an exaggeration. There must 
always have been a few scholars here and there who 
had some knowledge of Greek, picked up perhaps on 
journeys to the Levant ; but for the vast majority of 
those who read at all. Homer was accessible only in 



94 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

the Epitome Iliados Homericm of Pindarus Thebanus 
(first century), where the events of the Uiad are con- 
densed into 1100 lines of Latin hexameter. But even 
if Homer had been more easily accessible, it is doubtful 
whether he would have satisfied the mediaBval historian. 
To begin with, he lived long after the events he under- 
takes to describe ; and then, too, his work bears the 
marks of evident falsehood, for who can believe that the 
gods came down to earth and warred with men ? Fortu- 
nately there was a better authority than that of Homer, 
the authority of an eyewitness, who himself took part in 
the expedition against Troy. Tliis important document 
is the Ephemeris Belli Trojani of Dictys the Cretan. 

Dictys Cretensis was, so the preface of the EjjJie- 
meris tells us, a dweller in Cnossus, who with Idome- 
neus and Merion took arms against Troy. Realizing 
with rare insight that the events which were passing 
by unheeded of most would be of deep interest to the 
generations to follow, Dictys kept a journal written in 
Phoenician characters. On the author's death, the six 
books of his chronicle were buried with him in a tin 
case, where they rested undisturbed until the thirteenth 
year of the reign of Nero, when they were fortunately 
exposed by an earthquake. A Greek, named Eupraxis, 
carried the manuscript to Rome, where, at the com- 
mand of Nero, it was transliterated into Greek charac- 
ters, and from the Greek version a Latin translation 
was made by one Septimius Romanus. It is hardly 
necessary to suggest that this story must not be taken 
too seriously. Whether the work is really a transla- 
tion from the Geek, or whether the forgery was first 
launched in its present form, we cannot say with cer- 
tainty ; but scholars are now inclined to believe that 
the former is the case. The translation, if translation 
it be, occupies 113 pages of Teubner text, while the 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 95 

period covered begins with the birth of Paris, and ends 
with the death of Ulysses. The prose style of the author 
is fairly good, being to a great extent an imitation of 
that of Sallust. The date of composition is probably 
the fourth century a. d. The following passage taken 
from chapter ix, describing the death of Troilus, will 
give a fair idea of what the book is like : — 

At post paucos dies Graeci instruct! arruis processere in 
campum lacessentes, si auderent, ad bellandum Trojanos. 
Quis dux Alexander cum reliquis fratribus militem ordinat 
atque adversum pergit. Sed prlusquam f erix'e inter se acies, aut 
jaci tela ccepere, barbari desolatis ordinibus fugam faciunt: 
caesique eorum plurimi, aut in flumen prseceps dati, cum hinc 
atque inde ingrueret liostis atque undique adempta f uga esset. 
Capti etiam Lycaon et Troilus Priamidse, quos in medium 
perductos Achilles jugulari jubet indignatus nondum sibi a 
Priamo super his, quae secum tractaverat, mandatum. 

Dictys was greatly preferred to Homer, because he 
was more trustworthy, being, as we have seen, an eye- 
witness, and excluding all traces of the supernatural ; 
but there was one particular in which he was not per- 
fectly satisfactory: he was a Greek, and, as such, preju- 
diced against the Trojans, who were our ancestors. It 
is not necessary, however, to trust to the narrative of 
a single prejudiced historian ; by good fortune there 
was also an historian within the walls of Troy. The De 
Excidio Trojm Historia of Dares the Phrygian gives 
us an authentic account of the war from the standpoint 
of the defeated Trojans. 

Homer mentions {Iliad, 5. 9) one Dares, a rich 
man and blameless, a priest of Hephaestus. To him 
antiquity ascribed an Hiad older than Homer's. Of 
this lost work, probably the work of a sophist, the 
Latin version purports to be a translation made by Cor- 
nelius Nepos. Classical scholars believe that a Greek 



96 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

original really existed, of which the Latin version is 
a condensation ; but the condensation was certainly 
not made by Nepos. Ten Brink characterizes the 
Historia as ' a wretched, barren, often self-contra- 
dictory piece of work, written in the worst Latin.' It 
cannot have been composed earlier than the fifth cen- 
tury A. D. That Ten Brink has not been too hard on 
Dares may be shown by the following selection (chapter 
xxix) : — 

Postera die Trojani alacres in aciem prodeunt. Agamem- 
non exercitum contra educit. PrcBlio commisso uterque exer- 
citus inter se pugnat. Postquam major pars diei transiit, 
prodit in primo Troilus, caedit devastat, Argivos in castra 
fugat. Postera die exercitum Trojani educunt : contra Aga- 
memnon. Fit maxima caedes, uterque exercitus inter se pug- 
nat acriter. Multos duces Argivorum Troilus interficit. 
Pugnatur continuis diebus VII. Agamemnon indutias petit 
in duo menses. 

Fifty-two pages of Teubner text are filled with such 
wretched stuff as this! But despite its inferiority, 
Dares seems to have been more popular with the Mid- 
dle Ages than Dictys. He was a Trojan, and therefore 
a countryman ; he was at any rate mercifully brief ; 
perhaps, as Ten Brink suggests, the very fact that the 
work is but an epitome made it all the more availa- 
ble for the expansion and adornment which the Troy 
story was to receive at the hands of Benoit de Sainte- 
More.^ 

In the latter half of the twelfth century, according 
to M. Joly in the year 1184, appeared a work which 
lies at the foundation of the whole later development 
of the legend of Troy; this is the Roman de Troie 

^ There is some reason to believe that a mucli longer Latin version of 
Dares may have been extant in the Middle Ages, of which the existing 
Historia is a condensation. 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 97 

of Benoit de Sainte-More.* Of Benoit, as of so many 
authors of the Middle Ages, we know nothing with cer- 
tainty. M. Joly, the editor of the JRoman, has tried 
to prove that he was a Norman attached to the English 
court of Henry II ; but this scrap of information rests 
on the assumption that he is identical with a Benoit who 
wrote a Chronique des Dues de Normandie, and this 
identification has been questioned.- However shadowy 
the life of Benoit may be, his book is a very substantial, 
and to the student a rather appalling, fact of 30,108 lines 
of octosyllabic couplets. Using as his basis the brief 
epitome of Dares, ^ and supplementing the matter there 
found from Dictys and Ovid, and perhaps other au- 
thors still, Benoit has given us a detailed history, which 
begins with the Argonautic expedition, describes the 
tape of Helen, the gathering of the Greek hosts, and, 
after telling the events of the siege and fall of Troy, 
devotes 5000 lines to the return of the Greek warriors 
to their homes, ending with the death of Ulysses. One 
would not like to be compelled to read the Roman 
through from cover to cover ; but taken in moderate 
doses, Benoit has a good deal of poetic charm. Com- 
pared with Dictys and Dares, Benoit is great literature. 
Whatever appeal Benoit may make to us by his 
poetry is powerfully reinforced by the sympathy he 
arouses in us as the victim of one of the most startling 
pieces of highway robbery in all the annals of plagia- 
rism. A little more than a century after the appearance 
of the Roman de Troie, in 1287, an Italian named 

^ That Chaucer was acquainted with Benoit's Roman, and derived 
several hints from it for his Troilus, has been shown by Dr. J. W. 
Broatch in The Journal of Germanic Philology, 2. 14-28. 

2 My friend Professor F. M. Warren of Yale tells me that he has 
conclusive evidence that the Roman and the Chronique are the work 
of a single author. 

' Or perhaps a longer version of Dares, now lost. 



98 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Guido delle Colon ne produced in turgid Latin prose 
a paraphrase of Beuoit's French poem. Guido, who 
was careful to say nothing about his indebtedness to 
Benoit, not only succeeded in passing off his Historia 
Trojana as an original composition ; but was until after 
the middle of the nineteenth century actually believed 
to be the original from whom the hardly entreated Be- 
noit drew the material of his Roman. Guido added 
little to the substance of the tradition ; but because 
his work was in the universal language of Europe, it 
attained a wide circulation, was translated into many 
languages, and became the basis for several Middle 
English 'Troy Books,' of which Lydgate's is, per- 
haps, the most important. 

Before considering the Filostrato of Boccaccio, the 
immediate source of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, 
it will be necessary to look back once more over the 
ground already traversed, and notice the degree of 
prominence given by earlier authors to the figures of 
Chaucer's pair of lovers. Homer merely mentions in 
a single passage {Jliad, 24. 257) the chariot-fighter 
Troilus as one of the sons of Priam whom Ares has 
destroyed. Virgil devotes a few lines to an account 
of his death Q^neid, 1. 474-478). Criseyde, or Bri- 
seida as Benoit calls her, probably represents two Ho- 
meric personages : Briseis, the slave of Achilles, whose 
name appears in the accusative Briseida in Iliad, 1. 
184, and Chiyseis, daughter of the seer Chryses, who 
is taken from Agamemnon at the command of Apollo. 
The accusative of her name, Chryseida, occurs in Iliad, 
1. 182. As the professor of legerdemain will take two 
thin rabbits, and, rubbing them together in his hands, 
present us with one particularly fat rabbit, so these 
two unimportant characters have combined to form the 
heroine of the mediaeval tale of Troy. In Dictys and 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 99 

Dares, Troilus has become a more important figure 
among the sons of Priam, and Briseida is accorded 
some prominence ; but there is no hint of any relation- 
ship between them. Dares, who realizes that posterity 
will be interested to know the personal appearance of 
the Greeks and Trojans, has given us a series of por- 
traits of the more important personages on each side. 
Here is what he says of our hero and heroine : ' Troi- 
lum magnum pulcherrimum pro setate valentem fortem 
cupidum virtutis. . . . Briseidam formosam non alta 
statura candidara capillo flavo et molli superciliis junc- 
tis oculis venustis corpore sequali blandam affabilem 
verecundam animo simplici piam.' 

It is to Benoit de Sainte-More, so far as we can de- 
termine, that must be given the credit of inventing the 
story of the faithful love of Troilus and the faithless- 
ness of Criseyde. One must not suppose, however, 
that the story furnishes the central theme of his volu- 
minous work. It is merely an episode, which, during 
about a third of his work, serves to relieve the annals 
of bloodshed. We first meet the episode at line 12931, 
when a parliament is held to decide upon the return of 
Briseida to the Grecian camp ; the death of Troilus 
occurs a thousand lines before the end of the poem.^ 
In the main the events recorded agree with those de- 
scribed in the latter half of the poems of Boccaccio 
and Chaucer. Though a King Pandarus is mentioned 
by Benoit at line 12938 as one of the councilors in the 
Trojan parliament, he bears no part in the determina- 
tion of the fortunes of Troilus and his love. 

It was the genius of Boccaccio which first recognized 

1 For those who care to follow the story in its original form I will 
give a list of the passages in which the episode is treated : 11. 12931- 
12986, i:J235-13831, 14211-14307, 14927-15112, 20057-20110, 20175- 
20330, 21369-21730. 



100 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

i in the Troilus and Briseida episode of Benoit the 
I material for a single and unified love story. ' Boccaccio 
■ seems to have known both Guido and Benoit ; Italian 
translations of both were then in existence ; and on 
their basis he built up one of his most charming works, 
the most perfect of his epic poems. . . . The story lay 
before him finished, as part of a richly organized 
whole, and his only creative work was that specially 
suited to the poet, viz., the exercise of selection, of 
spiritual penetration, of deepening the characterization, 
and of glorifying all by a jjoetic presentation. . . . The 
fight may rage without before the walls. Hector or 
Ajax may acquire glory, Trojans or Greeks may gain 
the victory — of such things we only hear so much as 
the economy of the love romance requires. We are 
occupied with the sudden commencement and the vio- 
lent growth of Troilus's passion ; we almost participate 
while listening to his sighing and complaints ; we fol- 
low with excitement the progress of the intrigue by 
which Griseida is made aware of his passion and begins 
to show some interest in the youthful prince, up till the 
moment when his supplication is granted. . . . This 
tender, sentimental tale (for the poet passes quickly 
over the conclusion, and all the warlike scenes) is pre- 
sented by Boccaccio with great psychological discern- 
ment, and with the most personal participation, though 
here and there with a slight tinge of irony. A truly 
creative spirit is revealed by the way in which the 
details are worked out, and by the thousand little 
touches that make us interested in his characters. But 
all these touches converge to one point, all have the 
same tendency.' ' 

In spite of Ten Brink's assertion that Boccaccio 
found the story ready made to his hand, the Italian poet 
1 Ten Brink, History of English Literature (Eng. trans.), 2. 88-90. 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 101 

has added much that is absolutely essential to the story 
as we know it. Benoit's episode, as we have seen, be- 
gins with the departure of the heroine for the Greek 
camp, and in consequence the main interest of the tale 
centres about her intrigue with Dioraede, the Troilus 
story serving as little more than an introduction. All 
the earlier scenes of the Filosti'ato are Boccaccio's 
invention. To serve as motive force for this earlier 
part of the story, the poet has invented the character 
of Pandarus. The Pandarus of Boccaccio, to be sure, 
is not the middle-aged uncle of blunted moral percep- 
tions whom we know from Chaucer ; he is a young and 
sprightly Florentine gentleman, an intimate companion 
of Troilus, and cousin to Griseida. Nor do we find in 
him the same cleverness of intrigue as in Chaucer ; for 
Boccaccio's heroine does not need to be trapped. The 
change that has been wrought by Chaucer in the char- 
acter of Pandarus and in that of Griseida will be dis- 
cussed in another section of this chapter. 

In the preceding section of this chapter we have 
traced the development of the Troy myth as a whole, 
and have seen how the genius of Boccaccio, Boccaccio, 
seizing on a single episode of Benoit's Ro- an^ shake- 
man, has made a new and independent speare. 
romance, not of battles long ago, but of lovers and their 
love. This new creation has become one of the great 
world-stories, both in virtue of its intrinsic interest and 
because of its use by three great world-poets : Boccaccio, 
Chaucer, and Shakespeare. It is in the highest degree 
interesting to see how these three poets have altered or 
modified the theme, each in accordance with his own 
character and underlying literary purpose. Boccaccio is 
a thoroughgoing sentimentalist, and he has told the 
story, accordingly, with full sympathy. Troilo is a por- 
trait of the poet himself, generous, high-spirited, enthu- 



102 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

siastic, sentimental. He has been in love before; 
but on beholding Griseida in the temple, as Boccaccio 
first beheld Fiammetta, he loves her w^ith all his soul. 
Pandaro is no cynical old bachelor, but a gay, light- 
hearted, loose-principled gallant, such as Boccaccio 
may have known at the Neapolitan court. Griseida is a 
fickle beauty, and little more. Troilo is the central 
figure of the poem, and with his love longings in the 
earlier part of the tale, and still more with his later 
sorrow, the reader is asked to sympathize in fullest 
measure.* 

When Chaucer approached the story, he was no 
longer young, and any sentimentality of which he may 
once have been possessed had long since departed. He 
retells the story in the spirit of pure comedy, not 
unmixed with irony, sympathizing with none of its 
personages, laughing rather at them all. Troilus is a 
lovesick boy, who takes a beautiful but worthless woman 
for an angel of heaven. Pandarus is a middle-aged 
busybody, who, unsuccessful in his own loves, undertakes 
to manage the love of others. Criseyde is the artistic 
centre of the story, and on the strange complexity of 
her double nature Chaucer has expended his best ener- 
gies, adding of his own invention two episodes which 
wholly alter the conception of her character. What 
these characters become in Chaucer's hands will be con- 
sidered in detail later on. Here it is only necessary 
to repeat that Chaucer's attitude throughout is that 
of the satirical humorist. Thoroughly in accord with 
this altered purpose in the narrator is an interesting- 
change which may be observed in what may be called 

^ An Entjlish translation of the F'dostrato by W. M. Rossetti has been 
published by the Chancer Society : Chaucer'' s Troilus and Criseyde 
(from the Harl. MS. 304-3) compared with Boccaccio''s Filostrato, trans- 
lated by W. M. Eossctti. London, 1873. 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 103 

the centre of gravity of the story. Though in the case 
of his Palamon and Arcitc, taken like Troilus from a 
poem of Boccaccio, and written at about the same pe- 
riod of his development, Chaucer has vei*y greatly con- 
densed his original, Troilus and Criseyde is nearly 
half as long again as the Filostrato.^ But Chaucer's 
additions and expansions are not evenly distributed 
through the story. They occur almost entirely in its 
earlier part, what may be termed in dramatic parlance 
the rising action, that section of the work which leads 
up to the complete union of the lovers and the fast- 
ensuing separation. In Boccaccio the first part of the 
story is told in 2288 lines, the second in 3224 ; in 
Chaucer the first part contains 4543 lines and the 
second 3514.^ It will be seen that as a result of this 
elaboration of the first part, the dramatic centre of 
the story, which in the Filostrato comes well before the 
middle, is thrown by Chaucer well into the second half. 
The significance of this is considerable. To Boccaccio, 
the sentimentalist, the chief interest of the piece centres 
in the pathetic scenes of the falling action. To Chaucer, 
the humorist, the complication of the plot, the subtle 
interplay of motive, above all the psychological problem 
of Criseyde's character, appeal more strongly. With 
the woes of Troilus Chaucer has little sympathy ; and 
when, in the Greek camp, the true character of Cri- 
seyde is unmasked to all, it ceases to interest him. He 
professes the utmost reluctance at narrating the faith- 
lessness of Criseyde, to which, he teUs us, he is con- 
strained by stern necessity of following his author and 
telling; strict truth ; but his real reluctance is at the 

1 The Filostrato contains 5512 lines, Troilus has 8057. 

2 For these figures, and for the fact which they illustrate, I am in- 
dehted to the intere9tin<;- study of the two poems by Professor Rudolf 
Fischer of Innsbruck in his work, Zm den Kunstformen des Mittelalter- 
lichen Epos, Vienna and Leipzig, 1899, pp. 217-370. 



104 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

necessity of carrying the story on to its conclusion 
after it has lost its absorbing interest. 

If Chaucer has transformed the spirit of the story 
from pathetic sentimentality to half-ironical humor, 
Shakespeare, in his Troilus and Cresslda, has ap- 
proached it in a spirit of bitter cynicism and blackest 
pessimism. The love story, which is after all subordi- 
nate to the intrigues of the Grecian camp, has neither 
the romance of Boccaccio nor the humor of Chaucer ; it 
is merely disgusting. Troilus remains much what he is 
in Chaucer ; but Cressida has flung away even the pre- 
tense of virtue, and is merely a confessed wanton. The 
keen-sighted Ulysses reads her at a glance : — 

Fie, fie upon her ! 
There 's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, 
Nay, her foot speaks ; her wanton spirits look out 
At every joint and motive of her body. 
O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, 
That give accosting welcome ere it comes, 
And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts 
To every ticklish reader! set them down 
For sluttish spoils of opportunity, 
And daughters of the game.^ 

That the generous Troilus, own brother to Romeo, 
should break his heart for such a woman as this is but 
another proof of the essential mockery of human life. 
Pandarus has lost all his geniality and humor, and is 
merely repulsive. To crown all, the final worthless- 
ness of Cressida, and the breaking heart of Troilus, are 
interpreted to us by the syphilitic mind of Thersites, 
whose whole function in the play is to defile with the 
foulness of his own imagination all that humanity holds 
high and sacred. 

Structurally as well as spiritually the play is bad, 
redeemed only by a few noble speeches in the Grecian 

^ Troilus and Cressida, 4. 5. 54-03. 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 105 

camp; and it remains one of the puzzles of criticism 
that such a work should ever have proceeded from the 
great soul of Shakespeare.^ 

Every visitor to the Salon Carre of the Louvre has 
stood in puzzled fascination before the Mona Lisa of Da 
Vinci, trying to fathom the meaning of that 
unfathomable smile of tender sweetness or 
of cunning cruelty. Much the same puzzle is presented 
by the Criseyde of Chaucer. Are we watching the 
treacherous defeat of womanly noblesse, or the logical 
working out of a weak, sensual character ? The former 
view is that generally taken by the critics. Ten Brink 
says of her: 'The English Criseyde is more innocent, 
less experienced, less sensual, more modest than her 
Italian prototype. What a multitude of agencies were 
needed to inflame her love for Troilus ; what a concate- 
nation of circumstances, what a display of trickery and 
intrigue, to bring her at last to his arms! We see the 
threads of the web in which she is entangled drawing 
ever closer around her ; her fall appears to us excusable, 
indeed unavoidable. And if afterwards, after the sepa- 
ration, she does not resist the temptation of Diomedes 
— how is she accountable, if her mind is less true and 
deep than that of Troilus ? how is she accountable, 
when that first fall robbed her of her moral stay?'^ 
Whether this view is the true one can be determined 
only by a careful study of the character as it unfolds 
itself bit by bit in Chaucer's lines. 

In Book I, Criseyde is presented to us only at long 
range, and through the eyes of Troilus. We learn of 
her father's treachery, and of its effect on her own 

^ Those who wish to pursue the theme still further in Eng-lish liter- 
ature may read Dryden's version of Troilus and Cressida, in which the 
character of the heroine is vitally altered by a new interpretation put 
upon her relations with Diomod. 

2 History of English Literature (Eng-. trans.), 2. 92. 



106 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

position in Trojan society. She is a widow, still in 
mourning ; and this fact, coupled with the unpopular- 
ity of her father, leads her to live in the quiet retire- 
ment of her own home. We hear of her exceeding great 
beauty : — 

As to my dome, in al Troyes citee 

Nas noon so fair, for passing every wight 

So aungellyk was bir natyf beantee, 

That lyk a thing inmortal semed she, 

As doth an bevenish parfit creature, 

That doun were sent in scorning of nature. 

We hear too that she ' kepte hir estat ' and was loved 
and well spoken of by all. 

After such introduction, we are given a brief view 
of the lady as she stands at the temple service. She is 
dressed in black ; but in beauty she is matchless, and 
all the press is gladdened by her ' goodly looking.' She 
is always in dread of shame, and so she stands 'ful 
lowe and stille alloon ; ' but in contrast to this studious 
self-effacement the poet mentions her 'ful assured 
loking and manere.' Not only is she beautiful ; there 
is a certain queenly grandeur in her port : — 

She nas not with the leste of hir stature. 
But alle hir limes so wel answeringe 
Weren to womanhode, that creature 
Was never lasse mannish in seminge. 
And eek the pure wyse of here meninge 
Shewede wel, that men might in hir gesse 
Honour, estat, and wommanly noblesse. 

Is Criseyde conscious that she has attracted the atten- 
tion of Troilus ? We cannot be sure. Chaucer himself 
professes his doubt in the matter : — 

But how it was, certayn, can I not seye, 
If that his lady understood not this. 
Or feyned hir she niste, oon of the tweye; 
But wel I rede that, by no mauer weye 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 107 

Ne aemcd it [as] that she of liiin roughte, 
Nor of his pcyne, or whatsoever he thoughte. 

Yet at the scene in the temple Chaucer says : — 

To Troiliis right wonder wel withalle 
Gan for to lyke hir mening and hir chere, 
Which sonidel deynous was, for she leet falls 
Hir look a lite aside, in swich manere, 
Ascaunces, ' what ! may I not stouden here ? ' 
And after that hir loking gan she lighte, 
That never thoughte him seen so good a sighte. 

This is all that we see of Criseyde in Book I, though 
her presence, to be sure, fills all the long scene of Troi- 
lus's feverish love-longing. 

Book II may be called the book of Criseyde. An 
overwhelming proportion of the lines is directly dedi- 
cated to the unfolding of her character. On a May 
morning Pandarus goes on his embassy to Criseyde's 
house. He finds her in a ' paved parlour ' with two 
other ladies, listening to the 'geste of the Sege of 
Thebes,' quite unconscious of the fact that its author, 
Statins, was not to be born till near the middle of the 
first century a. d. He asks if it is a book of love she is 
reading, and is answered by a playful allusion to his 
own hopeless love. In answer to his suggestion that she 
put away her book and rise up and dance, she reminds 
him of her widowhood : — 

' A ! god f orbede ! ' quod she, ' be ye mad ? 
Is that a widewes lyf , so god you save ? 
By god, ye maken me right sore adrad, 
Ye ben so wilde, it semeth as ye rave ! 
It sete me wel bet ay in a cave 
To bidde, and rede on holy seyntes lyves : 
Lat maydens gon to daunce, and yonge wyves.' 

This protestation is hardly to be taken very seri- 
ously; at least, Pandarus pays no attention to her 
words, but immediately begins to play on her woman's 



108 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

curiosity by hinting at a great piece of news that 
he could tell an he would. ^ He does not satisfy her 
curiosity ; but, appearing to change the subject, he 
insinuates the praise of Troilus, ' the second Hector.' 
He starts to take his leave; but of course she urges 
him to stay. Again they talk of things in general; 
and again Pandarus starts to go. At last, after much 
teasing, he tells her the news, giving her no chance to 
answer till he has spoken ten stanzas of appeal and 
argument. 

Criseyde's reception of the news must be noticed 
carefully : — 

Criseyde, which that herde him in this wyse, 
Thoughte, * I shal fele what he meneth, ywis.' 
* Now, eem,' quod she, ' what wolde ye devyse, 
What is your reed I sholde doon of this ? ' 

There is an air of cool deliberation about this which 
strikes one as quite incongruous. Here are no blushes, 
either of shame or pleasure, no trepidation of heart. 
Once more we are tempted to ask if Criseyde knew 
the secret in advance. Was all her curiosity mere 
shamming ? Or, perhaps, had she only half guessed it ? 

But when Pandar has given his advice that she 
return love for love, and reminds her that every hour 
is wasting part of her beauty, and that when she is 
old no one will want her love, all this cool delib- 
ex'ation melts into a passionate burst of tears and re- 
proaches. Pandarus is offended. Has she no confi- 
dence in him ? Well, if only Troilus might live, it 
matters not what becomes of Pandarus. Criseyde be- 
gins to relent a little : — 

And thoughte thus, ' unhappes fallen thikke 
Alday for love, and in swich maner cas, 
As men ben cruel in hemself and wikke; 
1 Cf . stanzas 18-22. 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 109 

And if this man slee here himself, alias ! 
In my presence, it wol be no solas. 
What men wolde of hit deme I can nat seye; 
It nedeth meful sleyly for to pleye.' 

Once more, particularly in the last of these lines, 
one discovers that curious tone of calculation which 
was noticed above. With a sudden shift of mood, she 
drops her rebukes and anxieties, and becomes curious 
about this new-found lover. Pandarus grows eloquent 
in his description of the love-longing of Troilus. At 
last he takes his leave ; and Criseyde is left alone to 
consider her new situation. At this juncture, by good 
fortune, Troilus himself comes into view. It is not the 
love-sick Troilus, whom we saw in Book I, pouring 
out his griefs in Pandar's ears, but Troilus the warrior, 
fresh from battle, his charger wounded : — 

His helm to-hewen was in twenty places, 

That by a tissew heng, his bak behinde, 

His sheld to-dasshed was with swerdes and maces. 

In which men mighte many an arwe finde 

That thirled hadde horn and nerf and rinde; 

And ay the peple cryde, * here cometh our joye, 

And, next his brother, holdere up of Troye ! ' 

If anything were needed to complete Pandar's work, 
here is a living argument. Criseyde considers his 
excellent prowess, his estate and reputation, his wit, 
his shape, his courtesy, and above all his love for her. 
Would it not be a pity to slay such an one ? 

The student of the poem must read carefully Cri- 
seyde's long soliloquy in stanzas 101-116 of Book II. 
The passage is too long to quote ; but attention must 
be called again to the tone of calm calculation, not to 
say casuistry, which characterizes it. 

Criseyde now goes down into her garden, where her 
niece, Antigone, sings a song in praise of love, which 



110 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

completes the overthrow of Criseyde's heart — if she 
really has a heart to be conquered. 

On the next day Pandarus returns to the attack with 
a letter from Troilus, which Criseyde at first refuses to 
receive, — this surely is feigning ! — but at length even 
consents to answer. Once more the warrior passes by. 

If we stop now for a moment to take account of 
Criseyde's behavior in this, the preliminary stage of 
the action, we are impressed first of all by her absolute 
self-assurance — the ' f ul assured loking and manere ' 
which was noticeable as she stood in the temple. She 
is always, both in soliloquy and in conversation with 
her uncle, complete mistress of the situation, every word 
is calculated, every step is taken as the result of calm 
deliberation. One looks in vain for the innocence and 
inexperience postulated by Ten Brink : — 

' It nedeth me f ul sleyly for to pleye.' 

The line sums up the lady's character completely. 

It is an interesting fact that Criseyde, with all her 
native force of personality, never takes a single step 
of her own volition. It is Pandarus who through all 
the first half of the poem furnishes the motive power 
of the plot. As ambassador and love's advocate, he has 
spoken eloquently and with effect ; he now shows his 
ability as strategist. He has persuaded the unwilling- 
seeming Criseyde to answer her lover's letters, but 
that is not enough ; a personal interview must be con- 
trived. Criseyde, as the daughter of an open traitor, 
has enemies in the city ; and on the plausible pretext 
of a fresh persecution, Pandarus takes her to the royal 
palace of Illon to crave the protection of the generous- 
hearted Hector and of his royal brethren. Here, by a 
clever manipulation of the persons assembled, Pandarus 
brings her to the feigned sick-bed of the truly love-sick 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 111 

Troilus ; and the first meeting of the lovers is an ac- 
complished fact. 

Less shrewd in its devising, but equally effective in 
result, is the piece of intrigue by which the lovers are 
brought to a secret meeting in Pandarus's house. It is 
entirely proper that with her attending ladies Criseyde 
shoidd take supper under her elderly uncle's hospitable 
roof, and equally reasonable that on the advent of a 
drenching rain she should be persuaded to stay the 
night. Then follows the plausible lie of Troilus's jeal- 
ousy. After long entreaty, Criseyde agrees to a brief 
interview; and her complete surrender follows as a 
matter of course. No reader of Chaucer will forget the 
dramatic scene in which the old sinner Pandarus goes 
to the fireside, takes a light, and settles himself in 
conscious triumph to read an old romance, while his 
proteges converse, nor the pregnant words with which 
he takes his leave : — 

Quod Pandarus, ' for ought I can espyen, 
This light nor I ne serven here of nought; 
Light is not good for syke folkes yen.' 

These two scenes are of the first importance for 
an understanding of Criseyde's character as conceived 
by Chaucer, for they are Chaucer's original contribu- 
tion to the plot. In the Filostrato no intrigue of any 
sort was necessary to bring the lovers together. After 
Griseida's interest in Troilo is aroused, Boccaccio needs 
only a commonplace assignation, made by Griseida with 
her eyes open, to bring about the climax of his tale. 
Since Chaucer has deliberately devised these two scenes 
of Pandarus's intrigue, it was obviously his purpose to 
give to Criseyde's fall the appearance of a betrayed 
innocence. Boccaccio's heroine lapses from virtue of 
her own free choice ; Chaucer's Criseyde falls into a 



112 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

cunningly laid trap. We are not to reproach her, but 
to pity her : — 

What mighte or may the sely larke seye, 
Whan that the sparhauk hath it in his foot ? 

But what if the ' sely larke ' has deliberately allowed 
herself to be put in the sparrow-hawk's way ? Is this 
* appearance of a betrayed innocence ' anything more 
than an appearance ? We may pass over Criseyde's 
possible complicity in the first intrigue, for from that 
her honor receives no serious stain ; but how of the 
second ? Pandarus chooses for his supper invitation an 
evening, — 

Right sone upon the chaunging of the mone, 
Whan lightles is the world a night or tweyne, 
And that the welken shoop him for to reyne. 

Pandarus delivers his invitation, — 

At whiche she lough, and gan hir faste excuse, 
And seyde, ' it rayneth ; lo, how sholde I goon ? 

Sone after this to him she gan to rowne. 
And asked him if Troilus were there ? 
He swor hir, ' nay for he was out of towne,' 
And seyde, ' nece, I pose that he were, 
Yow thurfte never have the more fere. 
For rather than men mighte him ther aspye, 
Me were lever a thousand-fold to dye.' 

From this conversation it looks decidedly as though 
Criseyde foresaw that she would be storm-bound at her 
uncle's house, and that she would not be the only guest 
under his roof. Chaucer himself professes ignorance on 
this point : — 

Nought list myn auctor fully to declare 
What that she thoughte whan he seyde so, 
That Troilus was out of town yfare, 
As if he seyde therof sooth or no. 

When we remember that Chaucer's ' auctor ' does not 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 113 

relate this episode of the treacherous supper party at 
all, it is not strange that he does not list ' fully to de- 
clare ' the heroine's motives in accepting the invitation. 
Chaucer's assumed ignorance is only a delicate literary 
device. It certainly looks as if Criseyde knew well 
enough what she was about. 

But let us assume for the sake of argument that she 
went to her uncle's house in trustful innocence. What 
of her conduct after she arrives ? Chaucer has de- 
veloped his action step by step with such consummate 
skill, that the events of that fateful night seem to the 
reader as inevitable as a decree of fate. But Criseyde's 
free consent had to be won before Troilus was brought 
to lier side, and this consent would scarcely have been 
given by a lady of blameless virtue. 

We are not left to guess, however ; Criseyde herself 
explains it all in a couplet, the force of which a careless 
reader might easily overlook : — 

This Troilus in armes gan hir streyne, 
And seyde, * O swete, as ever mote I goon, 
Now be ye caught, now is ther but we tweyne; 
Now yeldeth yow, for other boot is noon.' 
To that Criseyde answerde thus anoon, 
' Ne hadde I er now, my swete herte dere, 
Ben yolde, ywis, I were now not here.^ 

There is but one conclusion to be drawn from all 
this. Chaucer has not really, as the critics tell us, 
ennobled the character of Boccaccio's heroine. She is 
the same lightly-loving lady, careful of her reputation, 
but careless of her honor. She is merely a little more 
clever in deceiA^ng her friends. It is Pandarus that 
Chaucer has changed and developed. With a positive 
genius for intrigue, and a mistaken belief in his niece's 
virtue or prudence, he devises an elaborate scheme to 
brinir about a series of meetings which she desires as 



114 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

strongly as either Troilus or Pandarus. She has no 
objection to playing the role of betrayed innocence ; 
and with just sufficient reluctance before the act, and 
reproach after it is accomplished (cf. 3. 1564-1570), to 
carry out the illusion, she walks with a hidden smile 
into the trap set by Pandarus with such needless craft. 
It is Pandarus, and not Criseyde, who is the dupe — 
an effect which adds immensely to the comedy of his 
cliaracter. 

If so much be granted, Criseyde's actions in the two 
remaining books offer no serious difficulties in interpre- 
tation. Though light of love, she is far from being 
heartless ; and her grief at leaving Troy and Troilus 
to rejoin her father in the Grecian camp is entirely 
sincere. She is really very fond of Troilus ; for who 
can help liking the brave, handsome, free-spirited boy ? 
Nor does she at all object to his idealization of her, 
untrue though she knows it to be. In that wonderfully 
wrought scene in which the Trojan ladies come to bid 
her farewell and torture her by their polite prattle, she 
really suffers, and we are right in pitying her. But 
that her heart is not really breaking, that her love for 
Troilus is not the love of a Juliet for Romeo, is shown 
by her refusal to assent to any of Troilus's plans for 
averting the separation, and her practical acquiescence 
in the royal decree. 

When she rides away from Troy, I think she really 
means to keep her pledge to Troilus and return on the 
tenth day ; but she had not reckoned with the person- 
ality of Diomede. He is no dreamy, idealizing boy, but 
a thorough man of the world. He does not lose his 
heart ; he merely improves a good opportunity to win 
a lady's heart. All the greater will be his conquest if, 
as he suspects, she has a love in Troy. He needs no 
intriguing Pandarus, no long delay of courtship. He 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 115 

spends no sleepless nights. Instantly he sets to work, 
and before the Grecian camp is reached, he has made 
an impression. That in the heart of a woman like 
Criseyde the absent Troilus should fade before so com- 
pelling a personality as that of Diomede is inevitable. 
Her potentially sensual nature has inevitably deterio- 
rated in her relations with Troilus, so that to Diomede 
she falls a willing prey. Still she clings half-heartedly 
to Troilus ; she has not ceased to care for him. Event- 
ually, she thinks, I may keep ray promise and return. 
Her letter holding out a false hope is not necessarily a 
willful lie. But Criseyde's damnation is complete. 

If this interpretation of Criseyde is correct, proof of 
Chaucer's consummate skill will be found in the way 
in which he has conveyed a superficial impression that 
his heroine is a virtuous woman seduced by treachery, 
and has then in the sequel shocked and surprised us by 
her ready yielding to Diomede, all the while giving in 
his narrative the true interpretation of her character, 
which shall resolve all seeming inconsistency. One is 
tempted to ask, however, whether this artistic dupli- 
city is not too successful in its attempt to mislead, 
and whether in consequence Criseyde has not proved 
to many readers a hopeless enigma.^ 

Troilus is your typical enthusiast and idealist. Liv- 
ing a life of fantasy and dream, he is rudely awakened 
by the gradual conviction of Criseyde's faith- 

. Troilus. 

lessness, and is unable to recover from the 
shock. On a lower moral plane, and with reversal of 
sex, it is the same theme that Tennyson has worked 
out in his Lancelot and Elaine. 

As later in his ecstasy of love, so at the opening of 

' The view of Criseyde's character presented in these pages was first 
suf^gested to me several years since in a conversation with my friend 
Professor Albert S. Cook. 



116 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

the poem in his scorn of love, Troilus shows his imprac- 
ticality. Never having felt the sting of love, the ideal- 
ism of Troilus, mingled like most idealism with a strain 
of surquidry, makes him believe that he is superior to 
love. With the pride which presages a fall, Troilus 
strolls through the temple, scorning all fair ladies and 
all knights who dote on them, till suddenly the sight of 
Criseyde shatters in a moment all this fabric of the air. 

As proude Bayard ginneth for to skippe 
Out of the wey, so priketli him his corn, 
Til he a lash have of the louge whippe, 
Than thenketh he, ' though I praunce al biforn 
First in the trays, f ul fat and newe shorn. 
Yet am I but an hors, and horses lawe 
I moot endure, and with my feres drawe.' 

This shattering of his first dream of unreality does 
not shake the temperamental idealism of Troilus, be- 
cause the first broken ideal is immediately replaced 
by one of greater power. It is merely a transference 
of enthusiasm ; Diana is dethroned, but Venus reigns 
in her stead. There is, of course, some shame in his 
heart at the sudden change of front, which leads to 
careful concealment of his love, but his main atten- 
tion is absorbed in the process of idealizing the new- 
found mistress. It never occurs to him, however, to take 
an}'' active steps in his own behalf. 

' She nil to noon swich wrecche as I be wonne,' 

he thinks ; would God I were arrived in the port of 
death, to which my sorrow will lead me !* If Pandarus 
had not intervened, it is probable that Troilus would 
never have spoken a word to the lady of his heart. 
The love would have remained an ideal passion, like 
that of Petrarch for his Laura. 

From the moment that Pandarus wrings from the 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 117 

unwilling Troilus the name of his fair one, the destiny 
of Troilus is in the hands of another. And this new 
steersman is no Platonic idealist. All women, Pandarus 
holds, are subject to love, either celestial or natural ; 
and since her beauty and youth render it unlikely that 
Criseyde has set her heart on things of heaven, there 
is every reason to think she will welcome the service 
of a worthy knight like Troilus. That she is his niece 
is no obstacle to Pandar's conscience : — 

Were it for my suster, al thy sorwe, 

By my wil, she sholde al be thyu to-morwe, 

he has assured Troilus before learning the lady's 
identity. 

Though accepting the proffered service, Troilus as- 
sures his friend that he desires nothing 
That toucheth harm or any vilenye. 

Pandarus does not argue the point; but there is a 
consciousness of his emancipation from such Platonic 
nonsense in his carefully ambiguous answer : — 

Tho lough this Pandare, and anoon answerde, 
' And I thy borw ? fy ! no wight dooth but so ; 
I roughte nought though that she stode and herde 
How that thou seyst ; but fare-wel, I wol go.' 

It is Pandarus who broaches the subject to Criseyde ; it 
is Pandarus who suggests that Troilus write a letter, 
and who later procures its acceptance ; it is Pandarus 
who arranges the stratagem of the first meeting, and 
the subsequent betrayal of Criseyde. Troilus all the 
while does nothing but obey orders — and that with 
a trembling heart. Does he not actually faint away 
when brought face to face with the attainment of his 
desires? One feels that Pandarus has seduced him 
quite as much as he has Criseyde. 

When Criseyde's departure for the Grecian camp is 



118 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

determined, and Troilus must face his first great crisis, 
tlie helpless impracticality of his nature shows itself 
again. Though present in the parliament at which the 
question was debated, Troilus dares speak no word 
against the exchange ; and at its conclusion merely 
indulges in characteristic laments. Indignantly he re- 
jects Pandarus's suggestion that he find a new love ; 
and when Pandarus suggests forcible abduction, Troi- 
lus, Hamlet-like, sees only objections and obstacles. 
Entirely in the character of an earlier Hamlet is the 
scene where Troilus, having betaken himself to a tem- 
ple — perhaps the one in which he first saw Criseyde 
— argues through a hundred lines, and more, on the 
question of God's providence and man's free will. This 
digression has been called an artistic blemish in the 
poem. Perhaps so ; but is it not entirely characteris- 
tic of Troilus as Chaucer has conceived him? 

It is with a mingling of pathos and irony that Chau- 
cer has shown the closing scenes of Troilus's story. 
While Criseyde is receiving the advances of Diomede, 
Troilus is sadly revisiting the scenes of his former 
happiness, looking gloomily at the barred windows of 
her empty house. 

The tenth day comes ; and we witness the feverish 
watching of Troilus. Pandarus encourages his hopes ; 
but in his own heart he knows better. 

Pandare answerde, * it may be, wel ynough ; ' 
And held with him of al that ever he seyde; 
But in his herte he thoughte, and softs lough, 
And to himself ful sobrely he seyde: 
• From hasel-wode, ther Joly Robin pleyde, 
Shal come al that thou abydest here ; 
Ye, f are-wel al the snow of feme yere f ' 

The evidences of Criseyde's faithlessness are at last 
too clear for even Troilus's credulity. His love is gone ; 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 119 

his Ideals are shattered. He has no resource left but 
to seek death in battle, which he finds at last from the 
hands of fierce Achilles. The idealism of a Troilus 
finds no abiding-place on earth. 

And whan that he was slayn in this manere, 

His lighte goost ful blisfuUy is went 

Up to the holownesse of the seventh spare, 

In con vers letinge every element; 

And ther he saugh, with ful avysement, 

The erratik sterres, herkeninge armonye 

With sownes f uUe of hevenish melodye. 

And doun fro thennes faste he gan avyse 

This litel spot of erthe, that with the see 

Enbraced is, and fully gan despyse 

This wrecched world, and held al vanitee 

To respect of the pleyn felicitee 

That is in hevene above; and at the laste, 

Ther he was slayn, his loking doun he caste; 

And in himself he lough right at the wo 
Of hem that wepten for his deeth so faste; 
And dampned al our werk that folweth so 
The blinde lust, the which that may not laste, 
And sholden al our herte on hevene caste. 
And forth he wente, shortly for to telle, 
Ther as Mercurie sorted him to dwelle. 

Ten Brink calls Pandarus 'a strange combination of 
Polonius, Mercutlo, and Sancho Panza.' As a comic 
creation he reminds one still more of Sir John 
Falstaff ; for in Pandarus, as in FalstafP, we 
have the curious phenomenon of a character wholly 
destitute of moral elevation, who is nevertheless so fas- 
cinatingly interesting that he compels our admiration, 
even our affection. Pandarus, though he has some of 
Polonius's sententious wisdom, is never a ' tedious old 
fool ; ' though he is as free as Mercutio from any moral 
bias, ho has none of Mercutio's fire-eating rashness ; 



120 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

intellectually as well as socially he is the superior of 
Sancho Panza. 

This masterly figure, perhaps the masterpiece of 
Chaucer's comic art, is almost wholly the poet's ori- 
ginal creation. The Pandaro of Boccaccio is a young 
man, the cousin of Griseida (and of Troilo). As 
an entirely unprincipled young gallant, intimately 
acquainted with the hero, he fills his position of 
go-between with all propriety, while the comparative 
alacrity of the heroine makes unnecessary any elab- 
orate treachery. By adding some twenty years to his 
age, and making him Criseyde's uncle instead of her 
cousin, and still more by causing him to use this more 
intimate relationship as an occasion for an act of down- 
right treachery, Chaucer has made the character of 
Pandarus infinitely more abhorrent to our moral sense. 
But, on the other hand, Chaucer has endowed his Pan- 
darus with an intellect. His masterful manipulation of 
Troilus and of Criseyde, his cleverness in repartee, his 
rich fund of quiet humor, his accumulated mass of prac- 
tical wisdom, his unfailing good nature, above all his 
wonderful power as a conversationalist — all these win 
our involuntary respect and admiration. Moreover, any 
moral indignation which we may be inclined to feel 
against Pandarus, as the betrayer of his own niece, is 
softened as we begin to realize that Criseyde is a will- 
ing victim, if she is indeed to be thought of as a victim 
at all. 

One positive virtue we must set down to the credit of 
Pandarus : his unflinching loyalty to Troilus. Though 
Troilus is, to be sure, a prince of the blood royal, there 
is nowhere the slightest suggestion that the friendly 
services of the old counselor are inspired by any selfish 
desire to keep a friend at court. Neither is there any 
suggestion that Pandarus is a mere parasite, who ex- 



TROILUS AND CRISEYDE 121 

pects his friendship to be repaid in meats and drinks. 
Of course it may be urged that Pandarus, like all clever 
managers of men, takes the same delight in his in- 
trigues that a good chess-player takes in the working 
out of his game, and that he does the work for the 
work's sake, and not from any love of Troilus. Unques- 
tionably Pandarus enjoyed the working out of his plans ; 
but in his first conversation with Troilus, and still more 
during the days immediately following Criseyde's de- 
parture from Troy, we find a tender patience with all 
the manifold extravagance of Troilus which argues gen- 
uine friendship. It is a good friend who will patiently 
listen to a lover's raptures and complaints. 

It seems at first sight a curious friendship — that of 
the middle-aged cynic, whose ideals, if they ever ex- 
isted at all, have faded into the monotone of common 
sense, for the extravagant idealist and enthusiast of 
twenty-odd. But the light-hearted Troilus of the days 
before he saw Criseyde must have been a charming 
fellow, with that indefinable attractiveness which one 
finds sometimes in a youth of good family and good 
parts. Then, too, there is the attraction which the fresh, 
unspoiled enthusiasm of youth exerts on those who 
have 'seen it all.' Even Jacques in ^s You Like It 
seeks the company of Orlando and of the disguised 
Rosalind. 

The comic effectiveness of Pandarus is twofold. We 
have first the spectacle of a past-master of intrigue, 
who, adapting himself perfectly to the different charac- 
ters of Troilus and Criseyde, is able to dominate the 
action completely, so long as it is confined to these char- 
acters, but who, on the intervention of an outside force 
in the decree of Criseyde's return to her father, sud- 
denly finds himself without resource, unable to aid in 
the slightest toward the resolution of this situation 



122 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

which he has created. Still more effective is the spec- 
tacle of an intriguer, who, if our interpretation of 
Criseyde's motives be correct, is exerting the highest 
endeavors of his intriguing genius to seduce a woman 
who needs no seduction, and who is all the time com- 
plete mistress of the situation. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE HOUSE OF FAME 

The House of Fame is deserving of careful study and 
attention, not so much on the score of its intrinsic 
interest of matter, or its excellence as a piece of liter- 
ary art, — though it is by no means lacking in either, 
— as because in it the poet of the Canterbury Tales 
has revealed himself more fully than in any other of 
his longer poems. The poem contains a philosophy of 
life, which, if not original, is at least noble. Its form 
is the artificial device of an allegorical dream-vision 
so dear to the mediaeval soul, a device which is caj^a- 
ble of the highest artistic truth only when informed 
by the burning religious zeal of a Dante or a Bunyan. 
Apart from the faults of this artificial form, one can- 
not ignore a certain lack of proportion, particularly in 
the disparity in length of the several sections or can- 
tos, and the evidences of hurry in the abruptness with 
which the poem ends — faults which cannot be wholly 
atoned for by the grace and charm of language and 
verse, the vividness of imagination, and the delicacy of 
humor, which pervade the piece. Warton's criticism, 
though couched in the language of a generation gone 
by, does not come far from the truth. ' This poem,' 
he says, ' contains great strokes of Gothic imagination, 
yet bordering often on the most ideal and capricious 
extravagance.' Despite its defects, the poem has 
enough positive merit to win a reading, and to the 
lover of Chaucer its personal interest gives it a promi- 
nent place among his minor poems. 



124 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Ten Brink fixes the limits during which the Hoiise 

of Fame can have been composed as the years 1381- 

84.' His reasons for fixin;;- these limits are 

Date 

as follows : that the poem was written later 
than Troilus and Criseyde (circa 1380) he argues 
from the similarity of several passages in the two 
poems, where the passage in Troilus seems to have 
been first composed.^ Moreover, at the close of T?'oi- 
his (5. 1788) Chaucer seems to indicate his intention 
of writing a ' comedy,' a term not inapplicable to the 
House of Fame. That the poem was written earlier 
than the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women 
may be gathered from the fact that in it Chaucer com- 
plains of the hardship entailed by his duties as comp- 
troller of customs (^Fame, 2. 144-152), while in the 
Prologue to the Legend we see his gratitude at his re- 
lease. The permission to appoint a permanent deputy 
for the exercise of his official duties was given in Feb- 
ruary, 1385. Very ingenious, though not fully convin- 
cing, is Ten Brink's argument to show that the poem 
may have been composed in the winter of 1383-84. 
'In the House of Fame, 1. 63, Chaucer names as the 
day of his vision the tenth of December. In the case 
of a poet who, either in earnest or in sport, busied him- 
self so deeply with questions of astronomy and astro- 
logy, we must straightway ask to which of the planets 
that day may have been subject. On this point Chau- 
cer does not leave us for a moment in doubt. Eepeat- 
edly in his poem he emphasizes the fact that he owed 
his journey to the House of Fame to the favor of the 
thunder-god, Jupiter (cf. 2. 100 f ., 134, 153 : 3. 917). 
Now the tenth of December fell on a Thursday [Jovis 

1 Studien. p. 124. 

2 Cf. Troil. 5. 358-385 with Fame, 1. 2-54 ; Troil. 1. 512-518 with 
Fame, 2. 131, 132. 



THE HOUSE OF FAME 125 

dies] in the year 1383.' » Professor Koch says of Ten 
Brink's theory as to the date of the poem, that it is so 
well established that scarcely any doubt can be raised 
against it. Mr. H. Frank Heath, however, in his intro- 
duction to the poem in the Globe Edition, suggests 
that, in view of the employment of the short couplet 
so characteristic of Chaucer's earlier verse, the work 
may have been commenced some years before 1383, 
and then laid aside, to be finished after the completion 
of Troilus. The poem betrays, both in matter and in 
spirit, so strong an Italian influence that I am apt to 
favor any theory which shall bring its inception near 
to Chaucer's return from the second Italian voyage of 
1378.2 Book III, however, when considered in its alle- 
gorical import, seems clearly to belong to the close of 
the period. 

Chaucer brought back with him from Italy much 
more than an acquaintance with the Tuscan speech and 
its literary masterpieces. Whether or not he Italian in- 
ever spoke face to face with Petrarch, it is fiuence. 
impossible that he should have failed to make acquaint- 
ance with the ideas of a man whose influence was the 
dominating one in the literary and scholarly circles of 
Italy in the latter half of the fourteenth century. As 
I have shown elsewhere, the fundamental idea of the 
Petrarchan Renaissance was individualism, the impor- 
tance of the individual life and character. This idea 
entails, of course, the habit of introspection, with its 
accompanying tendency toward self-revelation, and as 
an inevitable result of this searching of self, the desire 
for glory or Fame. Under the stress of this new influ- 

1 Studien, pp. 150, 151. 

^ Since these pages were written, an elaborate argnment has ap- 
peared to prove that the House of Fame was written earlier than Troi- 
lus. (J. L. Lowes, in Publications of the Modern Language Association, 
20. 854-860.) The argument does not seem to me convincing. 



126 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

ence, Chaucer must have asked himself whether he 
could hope to build an everlasting fame by continuing 
to write the amatory verse of his earlier French mod- 
els, precisely the sort of ' vulgar ' composition which 
Petrarch so deeply desj)ised. Should he not, too, rise 
to higher things, even though he should not abandon 
the vernacular for the more scholarly Latin ? In its 
striving for a moi-e exalted theme, in its personal, auto- 
biographical tone, most of all in its choice of Fame as 
a subject, the poem shows the influence of Italy and 
of Petrarch. 

No single source for the House of Fame has been 
discovered, nor is it likely that any will be. Warton's 
vague suggestion that ' it was originally a 
Provencial composition ' is certainly wrong. 
Quite recently, in the present-day infatuation for folk- 
lore study, an attempt has been made to find in Euro- 
pean folk-lore a suggestion for the mountain of ice 
reached by a journey on an eagle's back, an attempt 
which is very far from convincing.* There is no good 
reason to doubt that Chaucer alone is responsible for 
the plot, though, as we shall see, he drew largely on his 
reading in working out its details. 

Among the works on which Chaucer drew, the first 
place is occupied by the Divine Comedy of Dante. 
The resemblances between the House of Fame and 
the divine poem of Dante, first noticed by the French 
critic, Sandras, in his JEtude sur G. Chaucer (1859), 
and further elaborated by Ten Brink in his /Studien, 
have been worked out with great thoroughness by 
Professor Rambeau in Fnglische Studien, 3. 209-268. 
In each case the poet finds himself alone in a great 
wilderness. As Virgil and Beatrice conduct Dante 

1 A. C. Garrett, ' Studies in Chancer's House of Fame,' Harvard 
Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, 5. 151-176. 



THE HOUSE OF FAME 127 

through the world of spirit, and explain to him the 
meaning of what he sees, so the philosophical eagle 
seizes on Chaucer, and bears him aloft to the House of 
Fame, entertaining him on his journey with scientific 
discourse on the nature of sound. Dante, too, was 
borne aloft on the back of an eagle (JPurgatorio^ 9). 
Each poem is divided into three divisions. In many 
passages direct imitation of Dante's words may be 
shown. Professor llambeau adduces many ether paral- 
lels between the two poems, most of which are rather 
fanciful. It is clear enough, however, that Chaucer 
was well acquainted with Dante at the time he wrote 
the House of Fame; but that the English poem is in 
any sense an imitation of the Italian becomes absurd 
when we contrast the terrible seriousness of Dante with 
the playful tone which runs all through the House of 
Fame. Nor is there any reason to consider that Chau- 
cer was parodying the Divine Comedy. If we covdd 
believe Chaucer guilty of such a sacrilege, the wide 
divergence of the two pieces makes the idea impossible. 

Next to Dante, the strongest influence is that of 
Virgil. The events of the ^neid are digested in the 
description of the carvings on Venus's temple in Book 
I, and the description of Lady Fame in Book III is in- 
debted to ^neid,^. 173-183. To the Metamorphoses 
of Ovid, 12. 39-63, Chaucer was, of course, indebted 
for the general conception of a House of Fame. 

Other works whose influence may be traced are the 
Somnlum Scipio?iis of Cicero, with the commentary 
of Macrobius, always a favorite book with Chaucer, the 
Anticlaudianus of Alanus de Insulis, the De Nuptiis 
Fhilologim et Mercurii of Martianus Capella, and the 
Amorosa Visione of Boccaccio. There is no evidence 
that Chaucer used the Trionfo della Fama of Petrarch. 

Perhaps this is the best place to notice that Pope 



128 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

has adapted the third book of the House of Fame 
under the title of The Temple of Fame. Warton's 
criticism of this paraphrase may be allowed to stand : 
' Pope has imitated this piece, with his usual elegance 
of diction and harmony of versification. But in the 
mean time he has not only misrepresented the story, but 
marred the character of the poem. He has endeav- 
ored to correct its extravagances by new refinements 
and additions of another cast : but he did not consider 
that extravagances are essential to a poem of such a 
structure, and even constitute its beauties. An attempt 
to unite order and exactness of imagery with a subject 
formed on principles so professedly romantic and ano- 
malous, is like giving Corinthian pillars to a Gothic 
palace. When I read Pope's elegant imitation of this 
piece, I think I am walking among the modern monu- 
ments unsuitably placed in Westminster Abbey.' 

To get from the poem the nearer view of Chaucer's 
character and aspirations which constitutes its chief 
The AUe- interest, one must seek to penetrate the veil 
^''''^" of allegory with which the author has partially 

concealed it. Though the reading of such allegorical 
riddles is always fraught with some danger of error, 
the indications in the present case are so clear that one 
cannot go far astray. 

In Book I Chaucer tells how in a dream he found 
himself in the Temple of Venus, made all of glass, and 
how the walls of the temple were all painted over with 
the story of -^neas. Beautiful as the place is, Chaucer 
is not satisfied. 

* A, Lord ! ' thoughte I, ' that madesfc us, 
Yet saw I never swicli noblesse 
Of images, ne swich richesse, 
As I saw graven in this chirche ; 
But not woot I who dide hem wirche, 



THE HOUSE OF FAME 129 

Ne wher I am, ne in what contree. 
But now wol I go out and see, 
Right at the wiket, if I can 
See o-wher stering any man. 
That may me telle wher I am.' 

But on leaving the temple, tlie poet finds himself alone, 
and in a vast desert of sand. So terrible is the deso- 
lation that he prays to be delivered ' fro fantom and 
illusioun.' This temple of glass, beautiful but unreal, 
is the realm of poesy in which Chaucer had hitherto 
spent his days, scanning the pages of Virgil and Ovid, 
making essays of his own in amatory verse. It is be- 
cause the poetry which Chaucer knew, and the poetry 
he had written, deals so largely with love that the tem- 
ple is called the Temple of Venus.^ It will be noticed 
that in describing the scenes from the ^neid depicted 
on the walls, chief prominence is given to the love 
episode of Queen Dido. As a result, we may believe, 
of his contact with the nobler intellectual interests of 
Italy, Chaucer determined to leave this region of fan- 
tasy, and step out into the world of reality. He finds 
it a desert. 

The meaning of this is made clear in the account 
which the eagle gives later of Chaucer's daily life. 
When he is not at the custom-house making his reck- 
onings, he is at home, poring over other books ' til 
fully daswed is his loke,' enditing of love and love's 
folk, — 

And livest thus as an hermyte 
Although thyn abstinence is lyte. 

So complete is his isolation that he gets no tidings of 
what is going on in far countries, and of his very neigh- 
bors that dwell almost at his doors he hears ' neither 
that ne this.' It is this remoteness of his life which 
1 Cf. Fame, 2. 106-120. 



130 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

makes the world of the actual which he tries to enter 
merely a deserted place. How shall he win for himself 
a name and fame, and attain the ambition which his 
Italian journey has set before him ? 

It is Philosophy, figured by Jove's eagle, which 
snatches him up and shows him the kingdoms of earth 
and of heaven. 

And tho thoughte I upon Boece, 
That writ, ' a thought may flee so bye 
With fetheres of Philosophye 
To passen everich element.' 

Much does Chaucer see on his journey, and much 
does he hear of scientific lore ; but the great end is to 
be the House of Fame, the abode of that goddess for 
which all Italy was sighing. 

Before seeking out the meaning of the third book, 
it is necessary to distinguish between the two senses 
in which, with some confusion to the reader, Chaucer 
has used the word fame. One meaning is 'rumor,' 
'general report,' the mysterious dissemination of tid- 
ings. Using this general report, or rumor, as a basis, 
some mysterious power distributes to men their meed 
of glory or reputation, and this is the secondary mean- 
ing of the word fame. It is with the first of these two 
meanings in view that the eagle gives his scientific 
explanation of how all reports tend by their own 
nature to fly upwards to a single centre, which 

Is set amiddes of these three, 
Heven, erthe, and eek the see. 

But in the third book we are shown first the dwell- 
ing-place of the goddess of reputation or glory. The 
poetic imagery is easy of interpretation. The mount of 
ice is slippery of ascent, and in its nature so lacking 
in permanence that the names inscribed upon it melt 
easily away. Only on the northern side, the direction 



THE HOUSE OF FAME 131 

of hardships and stern toil, were there any names of 
endurance. It is the bright sun of favor, not the beat- 
ing of the storm, which destroys reputation. Round 
about the castle which crowns this mount of ice are 
story-tellers, minstrels, poets, all those who help to give 
and to perpetuate a name. The lady Fame herself, 
is a wondrous 'feminyne creature,' semper mutahile, 
who, like Virgil's Fama^ is of such varying stature 
that one moment she seems less than a cubit in height, 
and the next her head touches the heavens. So does 
Fame wax and wane. Mutable in her outward form, 
the Lady is equally capricious in the bestowal of her 
favor. Perhaps the most brilliant stroke of poetic im- 
agination in the poem is the scene where the various 
companies of men, the deserving and the desertless, 
come to ask their boons of glory and oblivion, and are 
answered with no rule or reason, but merely as the 
whim of the moment may dictate. 

The moral of all this is plain enough. ' What is 
this fame for which we mortals sigh so windily?' 
Uncertain and evanescent, it is bestowed in so unrea- 
sonable a way that a man of reason and self-respect 
cannot but despise it. This is Chaucer's deliberate con- 
clusion. As he stood marveling at all this gear, some 
one addressed him, — 

And seyde : * Trend, what is thy name ? 

Artow come hider to han fame ? ' 
' Nay, f or-sothe, f rend ! ' quod I ; 
' I cam noght hider, graunt mercy ! 

For no s\¥ich cause, by my heed ! 

Suffyceth me, as I were deed. 

That no wight have my name in honde. 

I woot myself best how I stonde; 

For what I drye or what I thinke, 

I wol myselven al hit drinke.' 

These lines have the ring of true nobility in them. 



132 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

What Chaucer has gone out for to seek is fame in the 
sense of tidingfs. He would fain know more of human 
life and the deeds of men. 

This legitimate desire is satisfied in the house of 
Rumor, the ' domus Dedali ' to which Chaucer is now 
conducted. Here are tidings in abundance, false and 
true, of all sorts of happenings under heaven. Here are 
shipmen and pilgrims, pardoners and messengers, — 

With scrippes bret-ful of lesiuges, 
Entremedled with tydinges. 

If Chaucer cannot feel at home in the wide world which 
seemed to him a wilderness, if it seems to him contrary 
to the bent of his own character to seek for fame by 
writing high philosophies, he can at least escape from 
the artificialities of conventional poetry, and mingle 
with men as an auditor and spectator, if not as an actor. 
He can thus keep himself in touch with reality, and 
not spend his life in dreams. 

The poem breaks off abruptly, and we do not know 
how Chaucer planned to end it; perhaps he did not 
know himself.^ At all events, the poem as we have it 
leaves Chaucer in the house of Rumor, and there we 
find him as he rides with a company of shipmen and 
pilgrims and pardoners, an interested spectator and 
auditor, on the road to Canterbury. 

Chaucer has felt the influence of the new ideas spread 
by Petrarch and his school. Temporarily they have 
swayed him. Under their influence he has cast aside 
the old ; his intelligence has been awakened to a new 
and livelier interest in human activities; but his own 
native modesty and good sense have saved him from 
more than a temporary access of the feverish thirst 
for fame. 

1 For an interesting speculation on the subject, see the article by 
A. C. Garrett cited above. 



THE HOUSE OF FAME 133 

* I woot myself best how I stonde ; 
For what I drye or what I thinke, 
I wol myselven al hit drinke.' 

If one had any satisfactory proof for Heath's suggestion, 
noticed above, that the first two books were written at 
an earlier period than Book III, one might show how 
this process of development extended itself over several 
years, and how, perhaps, the more ambitious theme of 
Troilus^ and the more scholarly work of the Boethius 
translation, suggest a temporary seeking after the fame 
which came to Chaucer unsought as the poet of the 
Canterhury Tales. 

It would be a great pity to leave this poem without 
pausing for a few moments over the delicious vein of 
delicate humor that runs through it — the 
guarded allusion to the disagreeable sound 
of his wife's voice as she awakes him of a morning (2. 
560-566} ; the suggestion of his own substantial figure 
in the eagle's twice repeated exclamation : — 

• Seynte Marie ! 
Thou art noyous for to carie ! ' 

the poet's fear as he is borne aloft to the stars : — 

* Shal I non other weyes dye ? 
Wher Joves wol me stellifye, 

Or what thing may this signifye ? * 

the eagle's self-satisfied query : — 

' Have I not preved thus simply, 
Withouten any subtiltee 
Of speche, or gret prolixitee 
Of termes of philosophye ? ' 

to which Chaucer, taking the part of wisdom, answers 
'Yis.' 

' A ha J ' quod he, ' lo, so I can 
Lewedly to a lewed man 



134 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Speke, and shewe him swiche skiles, 
That he may shake hem by the biles, 
So palpable they shulden be.' 

Though the eagle speaks with the tongue of men and 
angels, the poet does not forget that he is a bird, and 
reminds his readers of the fact by the delicious conceit 
' shake hem by the biles.' It would be idle to point out 
all the humorous touches of the poem. If the reader 
cannot see them for himself, as Matthew Arnold would 
say, ^morietur in peccatis suis.^ What seems to me 
highly significant is that in this, his most introspective, 
self -revealing poem, Chaucer preserves his sense of 
humor. The theme is serious, and, we may believe, of 
vital import to the poet ; but he is too sane to suppose 
that his own thoughts and feelings are of serious con- 
sequence to the universe. He reveals himself, to be 
sure, but playfully. The sense of humor is a safe anti- 
dote for the feverish thirst of fame. 



CHAPTER Vni 

THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 

The Legend of Good Women marks the beginning of 
what is ordinarily called Chaucer's third period, the 
period which reaches full flower in the Canterbury 
Tales. Itself a collection of tales bound together by 
community of theme and by a common prologue, it 
may in deed be thought of as a direct precursor of the 
greater collection which follows. Chaucer has ceased to 
feel the overmastering influence of Italian models ; and 
though the intellectual stimulus received from Italy 
was not to spend itself until his death, he is feeling 
about for a form of literary expression which shall 
be essentially his own. That the Legend was in some 
sort an experimental venture is suggested by the fact 
that it was left unfinished, crowded from its place in 
his attention by the vastly superior conception of the 
Ccmterhury Tales. But experiment though it be, it 
is far from being a failure. The nine legends which 
Chaucer wrote are good pieces of narrative, told with 
the poet's peculiar grace and charm ; while the Prologue 
is, in its beauty of imagery, its buoyant freshness of 
an English Maytide, in its general conception and 
execution, one of Chaucer's most successful and most 
beautiful productions. 

The Legend consists of a series of tales, drawn from 
the storehouse of classical antiquity, recounting the 
fortunes of noble women, true in love, intro- 

c 1 1 Sources. 

duced by a prologue poem ot the dream- 
vision type so popular in the allegorical literature of 



136 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

the Middle Ages. In the case of such a work, one 
need not look for any single source ; one will ask rather 
what models Chaucer may have had before him, or 
what earlier works may have suggested the scheme of 
his poem. Two such works immediately suggest them- 
selves : the Heroides of Ovid, a series of imaginary 
letters sent by heroines of mythology to their faithless 
lovers, and, nearer to Chaucer's own time, the De 
Claris Mulieribus ^ of Boccaccio, a collection of sto- 
ries in Latin prose, wherein are epitomized the fortunes 
of famous women. The first of these works Chaucer 
certainly knew ; and there is every probability that he 
was acquainted with the other. 

In compiling materials for the individual legends, 
Chaucer seems to have done what any modern author 
would do under similar circumstances : he read all the 
accounts of his heroines which were readily accessible 
to him, and selected, adapted, and combined, as his 
literary taste impelled him. In the case of the first 
legend, that of Cleopatra, it is not very clear just what 
versions of the story Chaucer used. Perhaps a Latin 
translation of Plutarch's life of Antony was accessi- 
ble to him ; perhaps, too, he consulted the Historla 
adversum Paganos of Orosius (fifth century a. d.) 
and the De Claris 3Iulieribus of Boccaccio. Pretty 
certainly he was acquainted with the Epitome Rerum 
Momanarum of Florus, a Roman historian of the reign 
of Hadrian. The legend of Thisbe was drawn entirely 
from Ovid's account of the lady in Metamorjilioses^ 4. 
55-166, though the source was used by Chaucer with 
characteristic freedom. The story of Dido is taken, 
of course, from Virgil, though a few lines (1355-1365) 

^ Similar in character, tlioiigli wider in its scope, is the De Casihus 
Virorum et Feminarum Illustrium of the same author, used by Chaucer 
as the model for his Monk^s Tale. 



THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 137 

are from Ovid's Ileroides^ 7. 1-8. For the stories of 
liypsipyle and Medea Chaucer went, naturally enough, 
to Ovid ; * but he seems to have made even greater use 
of the account given in the Historia Trojana of Guido 
delle Colonne.- For the story of Lucretia Chaucer 
himself refers us to Livy and to Ovid,'' the latter of 
whom is his princii)al source. The remaining legends 
are based chiefly on Ovid, whose influence is the domi- 
nant one in the whole collection. Other works which 
Chaucer may well have consulted are the fables of 
Hyginus, the two works of Boccaccio mentioned above, 
and the compendium of classical mythology by the 
same author entitled De Genealogia Deorum.* Most 
of the stories of the Legend of Good Women are also 
told by Gower in the Confcssio Amantis ; so that one 
may, if he pleases, see how a less gifted contemporary 
uses the same material.'^ 

I For the Prologue the problem of sources is much less 
clear. It seems to have been composed under the gen- 
eral influence of a school, rather than of any particular 
models. This school is that of the French love-alle- 
gory, with its familiar devices of a dream-vision and 
a court of love, and its unfailing accompaniments of 
May-morning, singing birds, and springing flowers, of 
which the Roman de la Rose is the great exemplar." 
From among the vast throng of French love-allegories 
of this type, it is possible to segregate a small group 

' Metamorphoses, 1. 1-296 ; Heroides, 6 and 12. 

- Cf. above, p. 98. 

8 Fasti, 8. 461-510. 

* Chaucer's indebtedness to the De Genealogia has been convincingly 
proved by C. G. Child in Modem Language Notes, 11. 238-245. 

^ For a discussion of the sources of the Legend and of the relation 
of Chaucer's work to Gower's, see the excellent article by M. Bech in 
Anglia, 5. 313-382. 

** For a very thorough account of this poetry, see Professor W. A. 
Neilson's The Origins and Sources of the Court oj" Love, Boston, 1899. 



138 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

which exerted a more particular influence on the Pro- 
logue. 

Some twenty years before the probable date of 
Chaucer's Legend^ the French poet Guillaume de 
Machault wrote a Dit de la Marguerite^ wherein a lady 
named Marguerite, very likely a mistress of Machault's 
patron Pierre de Lusignan, king of Cyprus, is praised 
under the figure of the flower whose name she bears. 
The cult of the daisy was immediately taken up by 
Machault's literary disciples, Froissart and Deschamps. 
Froissart in his Dittie de la Flotir de la Marguerite and 
his Paradys d' Amours uses the same symbolism, with 
extravagant praise of the daisy, in honor of another 
Marguerite ; and Deschamps carries the same device 
even farther in his Lay de Franchise, and in several of 
his balades. As the fashion gained vogue, this symbol- 
ism of the daisy was applied even to ladies whose name 
did not happen to be Marguerite. So that one need not 
be surprised to find in the Prologue to Chaucer's 
Legend that the daisy is used to symbolize Alcestis, 
and, through her, Chaucer's patroness, Queen Anne.^ 

With the work of all three of these poets Chaucer, 
we know, was familiar ; with Deschamps he had per- 
sonal relations of peculiar interest ; for a balade of 
Deschamps is addressed to the ' grant translateur, noble 
Geffroy Chancier.' ^ From the balade itself we learn that 
it was to be sent to Chaucer, together with other of 
Deschamps's poems, by the hands of Sir Lewis Clifford.^ 
It is entirely possible that the Lay de Franchise, with 

^ For a discussion of the margTierite poems and their influence on 
Chaucer, see the article by J. L. Lowes on the Legend of Good Wo- 
men, in Publications of the Modern Language Association, 19. 593-()S3 
(1904). 

^ The balade is reprinted entire in the Oxfofd Chaucer, 1. Ivi, Ivii. 

^ For an account of Clifford, see the article by Professor Kittredgo 
on ' Chaucer and some of his Friends,' in Modern Philology, 1. 1-18. 



THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 139 

its praise of the marguerite, was one of the poems thus 
transmitted from the poet over-seas. However it 
I'eached him, we can be all but sure that the hay de 
jFranchisBy and Froissart's Paradys d'Amouis, and 
perhaps other of the marguerite poems, were in Chau- 
cer's mind when he composed his Prologue.^ It is to 
this group of marguerite poets, then, and to the still 
larger group of their countrymen who had written 
courtly allegories of love, that Chaucer is speaking in 
the familiar lines near the beginning of his poem : — 

Ye lovers, that can make of sentement; 

In this cas oghte ye be diligent 

To forthren me somwhat in my labour, 

Whether ye ben with the leef or with the flour. 

For wel I wot, that ye ban herbiforn 

Of making ropen, and hid awey the corn ; 

And I come after, gleniug here and there, 

And am ful glad if I may finde an ere 

Of any goodly word that ye ban left. 

One need only say that Chaucer's gleaning was indeed 
rich. 

In the Patent Kolls for the eighth year of the reign 
of Kichard II, under date of February 17 [1385], there 
is a writ by which the king grants ' by special p^te and 
Sfrace to our beloved Geoffrey Chaucer, comp- circum- 

-,.,.., stances 

troller of our customs and subsidies in the ofcompo- 
port of our city of London,' the privilege of ^^*^°'^" 
appointing a permanent deputy to conduct the business 
which he had before been commanded to transact with 
his own hand. With what delicious sense of untram- 
meled freedom must Chaucer have closed his books of 
reckonings, and taken farewell of his not too congenial 
associates at the custom-house on Thames-bank. No 

^ Despite the contention of Dr. Lowes in the article cited above, 
these poems seem to me to have served as suggestions, rather than as 
definite sources. 



140 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

longer need he crowd his study and his writing into the 
evening hours, after a day's work was already done. 
In October of the same year he was made justice of 
the peace for Kent, and in the year following he was 
elected knight of the shire to represent the same county 
in Parliament. These facts, taken in connection with 
his abandonment in October, 1386, of his house over 
the city-gate in Aldgate, suggest that the poet may have 
gone to live for a while among the fields and flowers 
which he loved. 

In the Parliament of Fowls, written to celebrate the 
royal marriage of Richard to the Princess Anne of 
Bohemia, which took place in 1382, Chaucer closes with 
the wish : — 

I hope, ywis to rede so som day 
That I shal mete som thing for to fare 
The bet; and thus to rede I nil not spare. 

Both king and queen must surely have been pleased by 
the poem, and perhaps the delicate hint of these closing 
lines, reinforced by Chaucer's charming picture in the 
House of Fame of his own desire to flee from the press, 
and dwell in the realm of the poet's fantasy, directly 
influenced the king to grant the relief from official 
duties to which we have just referred. It is a pleasing 
and plausible theory, if not quite a demonstrated fact, 
that the enthusiastic praise bestowed by Chaucer on 
the young Queen Anne under the figure of Alcestis 
in the Prologue ^ to the Legend of Good Women had 

^ The remarks which follow apply to the B version of the Prologue. 
The relations of the A version to this will be considered later. Until 
very recently, no one has questioned the identification of Alcestis with 
Queen Anne in the B version. Dr. Lowes, in the article cited above, 
assures us that the lines which have seemed to imply this identification 
are mere conventional commonplaces of the marguerite poetry. He 
forgets, however, that conventional formulas may be used to express 
genuine feeling. 



THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 141 

its roots in his gratitude for this relief, obtained, it 
may be, through intercession of the Queen herself.^ 
That the poem was to be dedicated to the queen is 
clearly indicated in Alcestis's command : — 

And whan this book is maad, yive hit the queue 
On my behalfe, at Elthani, or at Shene. 

Chaucer's disciple, Lydgate, even asserts in the Pro- 
logue to his Fall of Princes that it was written ' at 
the request of the queue ; ' but Lydgate may merely 
be indulging in conjectural scholarship on his own 
account. 

v/This dedication to the queen enables us to place the 
composition of the Prologue between 1382, the date 
of Richard's marriage, and 1394, when Queen Anne 
breathed her last, and her royal husband, in his grief, 
tore down the palace at Shene, where she had died. 
For a more definite date within this period of twelve 
years we are left largely to conjecture ; and the most 
plausible conjecture is that which associates the Pro- 
logue with Chaucer's relief from official duties in 1385. 
Shortly after 1387 Chaucer was probably engaged 
on the Canterbury Tales ; and it seems unlikely that 
he should have undertaken the inferior work after the 
happier idea had come to him. Were we entirely cer- 
tain that Deschamps's Lay de Franchise was in Chau- 
cer's mind as he wrote, the possible period of compo- 
sition might be still further limited ; for we know 
that the Lay was composed for May-day, 1385. On 
the assumption that this was one of the poems sent 
to Chaucer by the hands of Clifford, together with the 
balade addressed to Chaucer, a very ingenious argu- 
ment has been built up to prove that its transmission 

' The fact recently pointed out by Dr. J. S. P. Tatlock in Modern 
Philology, 1. 324-329, that Chaucer's petition for relief was presented 
by the Earl of Oxford, does not necessarily invalidate this conjecture. 



142 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

took place early in 1386.^ All probabilities lead us to 
assume that the Prologue was composed between the 
summers of 1385 and 1386. It is not improbable that 
some of the individual legends may have been composed 
at an earlier date ; ^ but for this conjecture there is no 
sufficient proof. 

A further problem of chronology is presented by the 
fact that the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women 
The Two has come down to us in two different versions. 
lil^Q^^ Our discussion hitherto has been confined to 
Prologue. the longer of the two versions, which recent 
editors have designated by the letter B, to distinguish 
it from the shorter version contained in a single manu- 
script (MS. Gg 4. 27 of the Cambridge University 
Library), designated by the letter A. That both of 
these versions are from Chaucer's own hand, no one has 
doubted ; but which is the earlier of the two, and what 
relation they bear to each other, is a question which, 
after much argument, has never been satisfactorily 
answered. The A version contains 90 lines not found 
in B, lacks 124 lines which B contains, presents a trans- 
position of several important passages, and numerous 
slight alterations in individual lines. All critics, I 
believe, agree that the A version is, aesthetically con- 
sidered, inferior to B, and that in it the identifica- 
tion of Alcestis with Queen Anne is much less clear, if, 
indeed, the identification exists in it at all. A omits 
entirely the couplet quoted above, in which the poem is 
expressly dedicated to the queen. 

From the argument of Eesthetic superiority it is not 
safe to draw any conclusions as to the priority of either 

^ J. L. Lowes, in Publications of the Modern Language Association, 
20. 753-779 (190.5). The argument involves so many unproved hypo- 
theses, that, while admiring its shrewdness, one fails to be fully con- 
vinced. 

2 See the article by J. L. Lowes cited above, pp. 802-818. 



THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 143 

version, for a work of art is as often marred as mended 
in remodeling; but that a loyal subject, and depend- 
ent of the court, should draw a highly flattering allegor- 
ical portrait of his queen, and then deliberately revise 
his work so as to efface the portrait, is hard to believe. 
Such an act would require an extraordinary occasion ; 
and it cannot be shown that such an occasion ever 
existed. The queen's death and her husband's sentimen- 
tal destruction of the palace in which she died might 
well cause the withdrawal of the couplet of dedication, 
but it can hardly explain the blurring of her portrait. 
The strongest argument for the priority of B is founded 
on the fact that this version shows more immediate 
indebtedness to the French marguerite poems than 
does A. It is urged that in a revision, particularly if 
this revision were undertaken at a period considerably 
later than the original composition, when time had 
somewhat dulled the poet's recollection of the poems 
which had served as his models, the traces of indebted- 
ness would tend to disappear. If, however, the second 
version was executed very soon after the first, the argu- 
ment loses much of its force. 

It is impossible here to enter into all the points of 
the argument, pro and con, and the present writer 
cannot pretend to settle so vexed a question; but he 
may be permitted to say that, after a rather careful 
examination of the controversy, the probabilities seem 
to him to favor the theory that A is the earlier version, 
and that B represents a revision, undertaken soon 
after the original composition, which had as its pur- 
pose the desire to turn the poem into a clear compli- 
ment to the queen. ^ 

^ The argument for the priority of B is ably presented by Dr. Lowes 
in the articles several times cited above (Publications of the Modern 
Language Association, 19. 503-GS3 and 20. 749-864). Dr. Lowes dates B, 



144 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

After a long May-day spent in the fields, Chau- 
cer falls asleep on a flower-strewn bed in his garden 
arbor, and dreams a dream. In this vision 

The Plan ' i • ^ r\ a i 

of the of the night appears to mm the (c^ueen Al- 

^°^™' cestis, dressed as a daisy, led by the god of 
love himself. 

There follows a band of nineteen ladies in royal 
habit, and after them a countless throng of ladies 
who were true in love. The god of love is wroth at 
Chaucer. Has he not written a translation of the Ho- 
man de la Hose, has he not told the tale of Criseyde, 
and thus thrown discredit on the name of woman, and 
shown himself a heretic to the cult of love ? Alcestis, 
the ever gracious, intercedes in his behalf. Has he not 
also written the Book of the Duchess, the Parliament 
of Fowls, and the Life of St. Cecilia, wherein woman 
is glorified ? Has he not written 

Many an ympne for your halydayes, 
That higbten Balades, Roundels, Virelayes; 
And for to speke of other holynesse, 
He hath in prose translated Boece. 

Surely he may be easily forgiven if he will undertake 
as penance to sing 

Of wommen trewe in lovinge al hir lyve, 
and of the wicked men who have proved false to them. 

1386, and A, 1394. His argument is colored throughout by the fact 
that he declines to admit in either version the identification of Alcestis 
with Queen Anne. The latest and fullest argument for the priority of 
A is given by Dr. J. C. French in a dissertation on The Problem of the 
Two Prologues to Chaucer's Legend of Good Wojnen, Baltimore, 1905. 
Those who wish to enter into the earlier stages of the controversy 
may consult Dr. French's cha])ter on ' The History of the Problem,' pp. 
3-10, where a full critical bibliography is given. Particular attention 
must be called to Ten Brink's article, ' Zur Chronologie von Chaucer's 
Schriften,' in Englische Studien, 17. 1-23, which maintains the priority 
of B, and to Mr. J. B. Bilderbeck's Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, 
London, 1902, which argues for the priority of A. 



THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 145 

The finished poem, then, was to have consisted of 
the Prologue, followed by the legends of the nineteen 
ladies who form Alcestis's train, and concluded by the 
story of Alcestis herself. But Chaucer had a sad habit 
not unknown to us moderns, of undertaking a large 
task with boundless enthusiasm, and of tiring of it 
before the task was half performed. He wrote nine 
legends (the last unfinished), praising the virtue of ten 
of the noble ladies, and then the new and the better 
idea of the Canterbury pilgrimage took possession of 
his mind. With the intellectual impatience so char- 
acteristic of him, he started on the fresher task ; and 
though intending to finish the Legend^ as shown by 
his reference to it in the Prologue to the Man of 
Laic's Tale, he laid it one side to wait for the more 
convenient day which never came. It is easy to see why 
the work was put aside. Charming as the Prologue is 
in its kind, it is after all only a dream, and forever 
inferior to the human reality and broad sweep of the 
Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Moreover, since 
the tales were all to be told by the poet himself, there 
was no opportunity for the dramatic variety offered by 
the Canterbury pilgrimage. Lastly, and most impor- 
tant, the very nature of the plan involved inevitable 
monotony — all the stories were to be of true women, 
faithful though abandoned in love, and all were to be 
drawn from the realm of classical antiquity. 

As Professor Lounsbury has pointed out, one can 
trace in the successive sections of the work the poet's 
growing tedium. Even as he wrote the last lines of 
the Prologue, he began to be oppressed with the mag- 
nitude of his undertaking. The god of love warns 
him: — 

'I wot wel that thou mayst nat al hit ryme, 
That swiche lovers diden in hir tyme; 



146 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

It were to long to reden and to here; 
Suffyceth me, thou make in this manere, 
That thou reherce of al hir lyf the grete, 
After thise olde auctours listen to trete. 
For whoso shal so many a storie telle, 
Sey shortly, or he shal to louge dwelle.' 

A similar note recurs in the first of the legends : — 

The wedding and the feste to devyse, 
To me, that have ytake swiche empryse 
Of so many a storie for to make. 
Hit were to long, lest that I sholde slake 
Of thing that bereth more effect and charge: 
For men may overlade a ship or barge ; 
And forthy to th' effect than wol I skippe, 
And al the remenant, I wol lete hit slippe. 

Other hints of weariness may be found frequently in 
the legends ; ^ but quite unmistakable are the following 
lines from the Legend of Phyllis : — 

But for I am agroted heerbiforu 
To wryte of hem that been in love forsworn, 
And eek to haste me in my legende, 
Which to performe god me grace sende, 
Therfor I passe shortly in this wyse. 

With such a warning, one is not surprised to find the 
next legend broken off abruptly in the middle of a 
sentence. One curious slip on the poet's part gives 
further proof that his heart was not in the work. In 
the Legend of Ariadne, at line 2075, we are told that 
Theseus was but twenty years and three of age ; only 
twenty lines farther on Ariadne suggests that her sister 
be wedded to Theseus's son. 

On the basis of the lists of heroines given in the 
balade introduced into the Prologue, and in the Pro- 
logue to the Man of Law's Tale, Professor Skeat sur- 

1 See 11. 1002-1003, 1552-1553, 1565, 1679, 1692-1693, 1021, 2257- 
2258, 2470-2471, 2490-2491, 2513-2515. 



THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 147 

mises that the remaining legends were to have dealt with 
Penelope, Helen, Hero, Laodamia, Lavinia, Polyxena, 
Deianira, Hermione, and Briseis: but since the two 
lists are not in accord, we may well believe that Chau- 
cer's mind was never clearly made up on the matter. 

The peculiar charm of the Prologue to the Legend 
of Good Women is in part the charm of spring-time 
and out-of-doors, in part the charm of noble The Pro- 
womanhood as figured in the fair Alceste, and ^°^®' 
even more the buoyant joyfulness of new-won freedom, 
as of an Ariel set free. First we see the poet, Chau- 
cer, himself in his daily life — in the study and in the 
fields. Though he is no deep scholar, he modestly 
confesses, it is his surpassing delight to read books, — 

And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence, 
And in myn herte have hem in reverence 
So hertely, that ther is game noon 
That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, 
But hit be seldom, on the holyday. 

Though a book-lover, Chaucer is no book-worm. There 
is one attraction more potent than that of ' olde bokes ' 
— the beauty of nature in the fair spring-time.^ But 
when we speak of Chaucer's love of nature, we must 
be careful not to confuse this with the love of nature 
which marks more modern poets. Nowhere in his works 
is there any suggestion that he cared for the wilder 
beauty of mountains and rocks and surging sea. We 
never hear that he spent a summer in Wales, or Corn- 
wall, or the Scottish Highlands. In his journeys to 
Italy he must surely have caught a glimpse of the Alps ; 
but never does he sing of cloud-capped peak or snowy 

^ Chaucer's picture of Maytide is, of course, largely influenced by 
the conventionalities of the French love-allegories : but his poetry is so 
spontaneous in its enthusiasm that we may safely assume that the con- 
vention chimed with his own natural feeling. 



148 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

summit. In the Frankliri s Tale the story demands a 
description of the rocky coast of Brittany; but the 
rocks are thought of as terrible and destructive rather 
than as beautifuh They even cause Dorigen to doubt 
the benevolence of their Creator : — 

Eterne god, that thurgh thy purveyaunce 
Ledest the world by certem governaunce, 
In ydel, as men seyn, ye nothing make ; 
But, lord, thise grisly feendly rokkes blake, 
That semen rather a foul confusioun 
Of werk than any fair creacioun 
Of swich a parfit wys god and a stable, 
Why han ye wroght this werk unresonable ? ^ 

Once only does Chaucer give a sweeping view from 

hill or mountain-side : — 

Ther is, at the west syde of Itaille, 

Doun at the rote of Vesulus the colde, 

A lusty playne, habundant of vitaille, 

Wher many a tour and toun thou mayst biholde, 

That founded were in tyme of fadres olde. 

And many another delitable sighte, 

And Saluces this noble contree highte.^ 

What appeals to Chaucer in the view is the fertility of 
the plain, and the evidence of prosperous human life 
furnished by ' many a tour and toun.' As for Mt. Ve- 
sulus itself, he dismisses it with the single epithet 
' colde.' The tale of Constance offers abundant oppor- 
tunity for describing the beauty and grandeur of the 
sea ; but the opportunity is not improved. It is merely 
the ' wilde see,' or the ' salte see,' thought of as dan- 
gerous and cruelly malignant. What Chaucer, and the 
men of the Middle Ages in general, loved in nature 
was the peaceful and gentle, the beneficent to human 
life. The beauty of a May dawning, the song of birds, 
the fairness of the daisy, the gentle sweep of a green 
meadow, the long avenues of a well-kept forest — these 
\ 1 F 865-872. 2 e 57.63. 

\ 



THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN 149 

were the charms which could hire Chaucer from his 
books and make him happy for a long summer's day. 
It is hard for us, bred and born in the atmosphere 
of romanticism, to sympathize with such a choice, to 
understand why one of the most beautiful of Alpine 
passes should have received the name of Mala Via, 
the ' bad road ; ' and yet who shall say that love of the 
kindly and beneficent is not as sane and reasonable as 
romantic enthusiasm for the desolate and destructive ? 
Following on the description of Chaucer's daily life 
comes the dream-vision itself. In this charming vision 
one may notice the skill with which the poet paints a 
wide and crowded scene without any confusion or dis- 
traction of attention from its central figures. Thou2:h 
the long description of the beauty of a May meadow 
belongs to Chaucer's waking experience and not to the 
dream,* the memory of it is so fresh in the reader's 
mind that no further painting of background is neces- 
sary ; and the dream begins at once with the entrance 
of the god of love, and of the queen whom he is 
leading by the hand. They, as the central figures of 
the scene, are described with all beauty of detail, the 
noble womanhood of Alcestis dominating all about 
her. Then, after the balade has been sung, our atten- 
tion is diverted to a definite number of attendants, 
the nineteen ladies. They are in ' royal habit,' but 
beyond this single touch they are not described. From 
them we turn to a vast company without number, and 
the whole scene is filled with beauty and goodness. But 
suddenly the whole throng ceases its motion ; all kneel 
and sing with one voice : — 

' Hele and honour 
To trouthe of womanhede, and to this flour 
That berth our alder prys in figuringe ! ' 

* We are speaking of the B version. 



150 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Once more our whole attention is brought back to the 
object of this adoration, and the action of the dream 
proceeds uninterrupted to the end. 

Beyond all this beauty of nature and of fair vision, 
there is the spirit of health and free-hearted joy per- 
vading the whole poem, which is too subtle for analy- 
sis, and fortunately needs no service of the critic. 

Into the Prologue Chaucer threw all the enthusiasm 
of his art ; but the legends which it introduces were 
The Nine Written, as we have seen, half-heartedly. 
Legends. Xhough the talcs are well and gracefully 
told, and much more than mere imitations of classical 
authors, many readers, I think, will fail to read them 
through. We are conscious of a 'hidden want,' the 
want of Chaucer's own participant enthusiasm. Any- 
thing which has been hastily and reluctantly written 
will be hastily and reluctantly read. There are a few 
passages of fine description, such as the highly ani- 
mated account of the sea-fight at Actium in the Legend 
of Cleopatra (a description which suggests the tour- 
nament scene in the KnighVs Tale)^ or the description 
of the hunt and ensuing thunder-storm in the Legend 
of Dido ; there is true pathos in the story of Lucre- 
tia, and real lyric passion in the lament of forsaken 
Ariadne ; and yet we feel that the legends are in 
the main creditable productions rather than inspired 
poems. Perhaps the Legend of Thishe comes nearest 
to being real poetry. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUP A 

Excellent as is the quality of Chaucer's earlier work, 
— rich in characterization, in humor, in pathos, in 
essential poetry, — it is in the Canterbury Tales^ and 
in them alone, that we find the full measure of Chau- 
cer's greatness. In their endless variety of beauty and 
charm they themselves are Chaucer. To attempt any 
critical appreciation of the Canterbury Tales as a 
whole is to discuss the literary art of Chaucer, and 
that has already been attempted in an earlier chapter. 
Detailed estimates of the individual tales will be found 
in the pages which follow. All that remains for con- 
sideration here is the happy device by which the sev- 
eral tales are bound together into an artistic whole. 

All the world loves a good story ; and long before 
the days of Chaucer, collections of short tales in prose 
or verse were popular in Europe and in the r^^ 
Orient. Very often, too, an attempt was made Frame- 
to give to such compilations a sort of collec- 
tive unity, either by community of theme, as in the 
Legend of Good Women and the Monk''s Tale^ or 
better by some framework story, as in the great col- 
lection known as the Arabian Nights. The Confessio 
Amantis of Gower is merely a vast treasure-house of 
stories bound together somewhat clumsily by the device 
of a lover's confession to the priest of Venus, the sto- 
ries being told by the confessor as examples and ad- 
monitions to his penitent. Early in the fourteenth 
century we have in English a collection of fifteen tales 



152 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

unified by an enveloping plot in the Proces of the 
Sevyn Sages. Most famous, perhaps, of such collections 
of stories is the Decameron of Boccaccio ; and though, 
in all probability, Chaucer was unacquainted with this 
work, it is interesting to compare the way in which the 
two foremost of fourteenth century story-tellers gave 
unity to their work. In Boccaccio a company of ten 
young men and women of high social standing flee from 
plague-stricken Florence to a country estate, the pro- 
perty of one of them, and pass their days in telling 
stories. On each of ten days a story is told by each 
of the company, the stories of each day dealing with the 
same general theme. Connecting links describe the 
other diversions with which the days are filled. 

Chaucer's device of a springtime pilgrimage to 
Canterbury has several advantages over that of Boc- 
caccio. In the democracy of travel it was possible to 
bring together quite naturally persons of varied occu- 
jjations and of diverse social rank, from the Knight 
to the Plowman, and in consequence to give to the 
stories a greater variety in theme and manner than 
is possible in the Decameron. Moreover, the motley 
complexion of the company and the adventures of a 
journey give rise to many humorous encounters, which 
add greatly to the realism of the whole. With constant 
change of scene, and with wide range of human char- 
acters, tedium is impossible ; and the reader enters at 
once into the exhilarating spirit of travel and holiday. 

Had Chaucer carried out his original plan for the 
Canterbury Tales., the Prologue describing the gath- 
The Nine ^ring at the Tabard Inn would have been 
Groups of followed by sixty tales, two by each of 
the pilgrims including Chaucer himself, each 
introduced by its own prologue. The connecting links 
between the tales would have kept us informed of the 



THE CANTERBURY TALES 153 

progress of the journey, where the nights were spent, 
where dinner was taken, of all the little happenings of 
the way. Then would have followed an account of the 
arrival in Canterbury and of the doings of the com- 
pany while there. Sixty more tales, with their connect- 
ing links, would have brought us back to Southwark; 
and a concluding section would have described the 
supper given to him who should be judged the best ra- 
conteur. Of this grand scheme Chaucer completed less 
than a quarter. The plan was modified in the course 
of execution to one tale from each pilgrim on the way to 
Canterbury, and on& on the return ; but in the work as 
we have it, many of the pilgrims are never called upon, 
and the company never reaches Canterbury, though it 
gets within sight of its towers. Even the stories which 
we possess do not form an orderly sequence. We have 
the first tale told, the Knight's, and the last, the Parson's ; 
but between the beginning and the end there are eight 
gaps which should" have been filled with tales, or with 
connecting links ; so that we have not a fragment of the 
whole, but nine separate fragments, the longest of which 
contains seven connected tales, and the shortest but one. 
These fragments are usually spoken of as groups, and 
are for convenience designated by the letters of the al- 
phabet from A to I. Further confusion is caused by the 
fact that in the various manuscripts of the Canterhury 
Tales the order of the tales is different, even the integ- 
rity of the several groups or fragments not being always 
preserved. But the references in the link-poems enable 
us to constitute the groups ; while the geographical 
references to the towns through which the pilgrims 
pass make it possible to determine with certainty the 
relative position of all but one of the nine groups. The 
group, of the position of which we are not certain, has 
been assigned by Mr. Furnivall to the third place in 



154 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

the series, and has therefore been denominated Group 
C. Its assignment to this position, though based on the 
slightest evidence, has been generally accej)ted as a 
convenient practical disposition of the case. 

Fragmentary as is the work, we are none the less able 
to piece out its allusions to places and time with what 
The Jour- wc know independently of the usual proced- 
canter- ^^^ ®^ pilgrims to the shrine of St. Thomas, 
bury. and thus to reconstruct with some degree of 

probability the route followed by Chaucer's pilgrims, 
and the time taken by them upon their journey. 

Though it was possible, when demanded by urgent 
business, to make the journey in much less time, it was 
the usual custom for pilgrims to spend four days in 
going from London to Canterbury, the recognized 
stopping-places for the night being Dartford, Roches- 
ter, and Ospringe, thus dividing the journey into three 
easy stages of about fifteen miles each, with a short 
stint of ten miles for the last day. Roads were rough 
and heavy, so bad that wheeled vehicles were usually 
impracticable ; and progress was necessarily slow and 
fatiguing. In the case of the pilgrimage which Chaucer 
describes, there were many reasons why the ordinary 
rate of travel should not be exceeded. There were three 
women in the company, and several of the pilgrims, not- 
ably the Clerk and the Shipman, were but ill mounted ; 
April, ' with his shoures sote,' had made the roads 
heavy with mud, as we know from the Host's assertion 
(B 3988) that he was so bored by the tale of the Monk 
that, save for the clinking of the bells on the Monk's 
bridle, he would certainly have fallen down for sleep. 

Although the slough had never been so depe ; 

lastly, the journey was being taken mainly for pleasure, 
and half the fun of a vacation is to take your time. 



THE CANTERBURY TALES 155 

At the beginning of Group B, which, as we shall see, 
occupies the second day of the pilgrimage, we are told 
that the date is April 18. It is on the evening of April 
16, then, that Chaucer enters the spacious hostelry of 
the Tabard, and finds the nine-and-twenty who are to 
be his fellow-voyagers. Allowing for the change in the 
calendar, April 16 corresponds to April 24 in our reck- 
oning, and at that date, in southern England, the sun 
rises about quarter of five, and sets about quarter past 
seven. Early on the morning of April 17, at break of 
day, the Host awoke his guests, and gathering them 
into a flock, led them forth at an easy jog, ' a litel more 
than pas,' the Miller playing his bagpipes the while, till 
they came to the little brook which crossed the Canter- 
bury way, called St. Thomas-a- Watering. Here the cuts 
are drawn, and the Knight begins his tale. By the time 
his tale is ended, the musical Miller is so drunk that 
' unnethe upon his hors he sat.' South wark ale, we are 
told, is responsible for his condition. He is not too 
drunk, however, to tell his churl's tale, at the conclu- 
sion of which the company has nearly reached Green- 
wich, and the hour is half past seven (half-way pryme). 
The Heeve's Tale next follows, and after that the frag- 
ment of the Cook's Tale, of which ' tale maked Chaucer 
na more.' Here ends Group A ; and the rest of the 
tales of the first day are silence. The night is probably 
spent at Dartford, fifteen miles from London. 

Either the start next day is delayed, or the story- 
telling postponed ; for it is already ten o'clock of April 
18, when the Host reminds his friends that a fourth 
part of the day is gone, and that they are wasting time. 
Group B is the longest consecutive series of tales, and 
since near the end of it, in the Monk's Prologue, the 
Host says, ' Lo ! Rouchestre stant heer f aste by ! ' and 
since Kochester was probably the stopping-place for the 



156 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

second night, it may be that we have the full stint of 
tales for the second day. Rochester is thirty miles from 
London. 

There is nothing to determine the place of Group C. 
Mr. Furnivall thinks the Pardoner's desire for cakes 
and ale more appropriate to the morning, and hence 
assigns it conjecturally to the morning of the third day. 

It was usual for pilgrims to dine on the third day at 
Sittingbourne, ten miles from Rochester ; and since in 
the Wife of Bath's Prologue the Summoner promises 
to tell two or three tales about Friars before they come 
to Sittingbourne, and at the end of his story says, 
' My tale is doon, we been almost at toune,' it is reason- 
able to assign Group D to the morning of the third day. 
Group E, which contains a playfid allusion to the Wife 
of Bath, is probably to be assigned to the afternoon of 
the same day, during which the party rides six miles 
to Ospringe, where the next night is spent. 

Near the beginning of the /Squire's Tale, which with 
the Franklin s constitutes Group F, the Squire says 
(F 73) : — 

' I wol nat tarien yow, for it is pryme.' 

Since, then, the time of day is nine of the morning, this 
group has been assigned to the morning of the fourth 
day. The position of Group G is clearly determined 
by the opening lines of the Gallon's Yeoman's Pro- 
logue : — 

Whan ended was the lyf of seint Cecyle, 
Er we had riden fully fyve myle, 
At Boghton under Blee us gan atake 
A man, that clothed was in clothes blake. 

A little farther on we are told that the Yeoman had 
seen the jolly company ride out of their hostelry in the 
morning, and that he and his master had ridden fast 
to overtake them. Measuring back five miles from the 



THE CANTERBURY TALES 157 

little village of Boiighton-under-Blean, we get Ospringe 
as the town from which they had set out in the morning. 
From Boughton the road leads through the Forest of 
Blean, a favorable place for robbers, and unwillingness 
to ride through so dangerous a place alone may account 
for the Canon's desire to join the larger company. 
It is at a little town, — 

Which that ycleped is Bob-up-and-doun, — 

that Group H begins. Antiquarians are not agreed in 
their identification of this village with the picturesque 
name ; but the village of Harbledown, just out of Can- 
terbury, seems best to answer the requirements. It is 
not yet noon, for the Cook, too drunk to tell the tale 
demanded of him, is reproached for sleeping ' by the 
morwe.' The Manciple offers himself as a substitute ; 
and it is his tale which constitutes Group H. 

The Parson's Tale apparently follows immediately 
on the Manciple's, for in the first lines of the Parson's 
Prologue we read : — 

By that the maunciple hadde his tale al ended, 
The Sonne fro the south lyne was descended 
So lowe, that he was nat, to my sighte, 
Degrees nyne and twenty as in highte. 
Foure of the elokke it was tho, as I gesse. 

The difficulty, however, resides in the lapse of time. If 
it was still morning when the Manciple began his tale, 
how explain the fact that it is four o'clock at its con- 
clusion? Because of this inconsistency in time, the 
Parsons Tale has been separated from the Manciple's 
and labeled Group I. When one remembers, though, 
the way time is made to gallop in Shakespeare at the 
demand of dramatic effectiveness, one wonders whether 
the inconsistency may not have been deliberately 
planned, so that the pilgrimage might end appropri- 



158 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

ately as the shadows begiu to lengthen. Personally I 
see no sufficient reason for making the division which 
Mr. Furnivall thinks necessary.^ 

What Chaucer would have done with his pilgrims 
after their arrival in Canterbury we shall never know ; 
The Tale but a monk of Canterbury, nearly contempo- 
ofBeryn. j.g^j,y. ^i^jj Chaucer, has given us a Tale of 
Beryn^ supposed to be the first tale of the journey back 
to London, told by the Merchant, the Prologue to which 
consists of a spirited account of the happenings in the 
cathedral town. This tale was first printed by Urry 
in his Chaucer edition of 1721, and has since been 
reprinted in 1876 by the Chaucer Society from a man- 
uscript belonging to the Duke of Northumberland. 

On their arrival in Canterbury, the pilgrims go to 
the ' Cheker of the Hope ' Inn, where the Pardoner 
at once makes friends with Kit the tapster, who gives 
him false hopes of her favor. The cathedral is, of 
course, the first attraction ; and thither the company 
goes to make its offerings at the shrine. The gentles, 
after being sprinkled with holy water, pass directly to 
the shrine back of the high altar ; but the Pardoner, 
the Miller, and other of the lewder sort, stare at the 
painted windows, and try to guess out the figures de- 
picted in them, and to interpret the armorial bearings. 
One of them sees a man with a spear, which he takes for 
a rake. After kneeling at the shrine, praying, and hear- 
ing service, all proceed to buy pilgrim's tokens to set 
in their caps ; but the Miller and Pardoner manage to 
steal some Canterbury brooches for themselves. Dinner 
passes by with much merry talk, and in the afternoon 

■"■ For the account of the journey to Canterbury and the time occu- 
pied therein, I have drawn on Furnivall's Temporary Preface to the Six- 
Text edition of the Canferhury Tales, § 3, and on Littlehale's Some Notes 
on the Eoad from London to Canterbury in the Middle Ages, Chaucer 
Society, 1898. 



THE CANTERBURY TALES 159 

each follows his inclinations ; the Monk takes the 
Parson and Friar to call on one of his friends; the 
Knight and the Squire inspect the walls and forti- 
fications ; the Wife of Bath and the Prioress walk in 
the garden (one wonders what common interests they 
found to talk about) ; the Pardoner once more seeks 
out the tapster Kit. 

Supper is eaten in grand style, the gentles treating 
the rest to wine, after which the more respectable go 
to bed, while the Miller and the Cook sit up to drink. 
Again the Pardoner makes advances to Kit, which 
develop into a broad farce, of which the Pardoner is 
the unhappy dupe. At daybreak the company starts 
on its journey home, and the Merchant is called on for 
the first tale. 

This, of course, is not Chaucer; but it is written 
in Chaucer's spirit, and is interesting as the work of 
one who, living in Canterbury, knew well how pilgrims 
usually disported themselves.* 

For a work so composite in its character as the Can- 
terhury Tales it is impossible to set any definite dates. 
Several of the tales now incorporated in the Date of 
collection, we know positively, had been writ- ^erijury 
ten by Chaucer before the great work was Tales. 
planned ; and the same may be true of other tales of 
which we have no definite information. The Legend 
of Good Women was pretty certainly begun in 1385 or 
1386, and was probably left unfinished because of the 
poet's greater interest in his larger work. It is safe 
to say, then, that the idea of the Cantei'hury Tales was 
conceived not much before 1387, and that Chaucer 
continued to work at its execution intermittently until 
the time of his death. In the year 1387, April 16 fell on a 

1 Chaucer's disciple Lydgate also wrote a tale for the journey back, 
which ia entitled The Tale of Thebes, 



160 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Tuesday, which would bring the pilgrims to Canterbury 
on Saturday, and since no mention is made of Sunday 
on the pilgrimage, it has been argued that Chaucer had 
the year 1387 in mind. But surely this is holding the 
poet down rather closely to the actual. If, however, we 
must have a precise date, 1387 has more in its favor 
than any other. 

THE PROLOGUE 

If we set aside the wonderful felicity of phrase and 
the sparkling humor which are common to nearly all of 
Chaucer's maturer compositions, the peculiar greatness 
of the Prologue may be said to reside in the vividness 
of its individual portraiture, and in the representative 
character of the whole series of portraits as a true pic- 
ture of English life in the fourteenth century. 

To the uncritical mind the value of a poi-trait depends 
on its likeness to the original, the fidelity with which it 
reproduces the peculiar traits of some individual man. 
Here, as in most things, the opinion of the man in the 
street is not to be lightly set at nought ; if the portrait 
lacks fidelity to its original, it ceases to be a portrait at 
all. On the other hand, if it does no more than repro- 
duce the individual, it falls short of true art. A photo- 
graph may be a perfect likeness, and at the same time 
supremely uninteresting to all but the friends of the 
sitter ; the portraiture of a true artist is interesting to 
all people and to aU ages. We look at Rembrandt's 
portrait of Dr. Tulp, and are immediately convinced 
of its lifelikeness. Though we never have seen the 
original, the marked individuality of the portrait, the 
peculiarities of feature and expression, convince us of 
its truth. But there is more in the portrait than the 
individual anatomist of long ago. The eager passion 
to learn and teach, the quick play of intelligence, the 



THE PROLOGUE 161 

unassuming authority of pose and gesture, betray the 
scientist. We behold not only the individual, but the 
type; the abstract type is made visible and real as 
embodied in the individual. This, the end and aim of 
true portrait-painting, is true in its measure of all high 
art. The true ideal is to be sought in and through the 
actual. However high we may tower into the region 
of the universal, we must plant our feet firmly on the 
actual ; and the actual is of necessity individual. 

It is by their successful blending of the individual 
with the typical that the portraits of Chaucer's Prologue 
attain to so high a degree of effectiveness. The Wife 
of Bath is typical of certain of the primary instincts of 
woman, but she is given local habitation 'bisyde Bathe,' 
a definite occupation of cloth-making, and is still further 
individualized by her partial deafness and the peculiar 
setting of her teeth. A wholly different type of woman- 
hood, the conventional as opposed to the natural, is fur- 
nished by the Prioress. The description of the gentle 
lady abounds in minute personal, individual character- 
istics, physical and moral ; yet all these individualizing 
traits are at the same time suggestive of that type which 
finds fullest realization in the head of a young lady's 
school, who fulfills in our modern life precisely the func- 
tion of the prioress of the Middle Ages. What is true 
of these two is true of all the personages of the Pro- 
logue. The details enumerated nearly always suggest 
at once the individual and the type, as in the splendid 
line about the Shipman : — 

With many a tempest hadde his herd been shake. 

It is the individual character of the several portraits 
which gives to the Canterhury Tales its dramatic real- 
ism and lifelikeness. Their universal character makes 
the Prologue^ and indeed the whole body of the work, 



162 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

a compendium of human life as it passed before the eyes 
of Geoffrey Chaucer. It is as a representative assembly, 
a parliament of social and industrial England, that we 
may regard this Canterbury pilgrimage. Save for the 
very highest stratum of society, the lords of the realm, 
who are after all but the golden fringe of the garment, 
every important phase of life is represented. We do 
not, to be sure, see the artisan at his bench, the sailor 
on his ship, the lawyer pleading his case ; that is, of 
course, dramatically impossible ; but more than that, 
it is artistically less desirable. Chaucer has shown his 
personages away from their daily tasks, on a vacation ; 
and, though the marks of the profession are still plainly 
discernible, it is their essential humanity which is 
emphasized ; each is measured by the absolute stand- 
ards of manhood. 

The life of the Middle Ages lent itself particularly 
well to such a process of portraiture. Though the dawn- 
ing of the Renaissance was beginning its emphasis of 
the individual, society was still organized on a com- 
munistic basis ; life was less complex. Members of 
the various crafts were banded together in guilds and 
mysteries, each with its peculiar livery. Each member 
of a guild was conscious of himself as one of a body, 
its representative and type. To-day things are very dif- 
ferent. In the so-called learned professions, perhaps, 
something of the old esjjrit de corps has survived. In 
the essentially communistic life of our universities, 
again, there may be found a strong, essentially medi- 
aeval feeling for the whole, and an approximation to 
a common type, so that one may speak of a typical 
Oxonian, a typical Yale undergraduate. But with the 
majority of us, the typical is lost in the individual as 
far as character goes, while in costume we dress, as far 
as possible, alike. 



THE KNIGHT'S TALE 163 

Chaucer's west-country contemporary, in the Pro- 
logue to Piers Ploioman^ has also painted a wide pic- 
ture of human life. In his fair field full of folk, all 
sorts and conditions are seen side by side, the mean and 
the rich, ' working and wandering as the world asketh.' 
It is instructive to compare this picture, which some 
have thought responsible for suggesting Chaucer's, with 
the picture furnished by the Prologue to the Canter- 
hury Tales. Langland, with his allegorical imagery 
of the heaven and hell which bound our little life on 
this side and on that, gains much in grandeur and im- 
pressiveness. Chaucer, with his individualized types, 
gains infinitely in reality and in human sympathy. 

THE knight's tale 

Early on the morning of April 17, ' whan that day 
bigan to springe,' the Host calls his company together, 
and at an easy gait they ride out of Southwark to the 
music of the Miller's bagpipes. When two miles have 
been traveled, and St. Thomas-a- Watering has been 
reached, the Host suddenly stops his horse, and reminds \ 
his guests of the agreement made overnight : — 
If even-song and morwe-song acorde, 
Lat see now who shal telle the firste tale. 

The cuts are drawn ; and, either by fortune or over- 
ruling providence, or perhaps by the manipulation of 
the Host, the lot falls to the Knight, whom every 
one feels should be the first to tell his story; and the 
Canterbury Tales begin with a high-wrought tale of 
chivalry and old romance. 

Though Chaucer is here and there indebted to the 
Tliehais of Statins for a bit of description, his great 
obligation for the Knight's Tale is to the 
Teseide of Boccaccio, from which he drew 
the whole outline of the story. Here, as in the case. 



164 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

of Troilus, he has as his model a highly artistic 
poem by one of the foremost authors of Italy ; so that 
it becomes peculiarly interesting to see to what ex- 
tent, and in what spirit, he has departed from his 
original. 

Comparing Chaucer's version of the story with that 
of Boccaccio, the most striking fact is their disparity 
in length. Exclusive of the rimed argomenti which pre- 
cede each of the twelve books, the Teseide comprises 
9896 lines, or 1237 stanzas of ottava rima, while the 
Knight's Tale contains but 2250 lines — little more 
than a fifth the bulk of its original. Besides this ruth- 
less use of the pruning-knife, one notices the abandon- 
ment by Chaucer of the division into twelve books, and 
with it of the conventional invocations of the Muse^ 
of much of the mythological machinery, and, in short, 
of all the conventional ear-marks of the Virgilian epic. 
But more significant than these external changes are the 
modifications and omissions which Chaucer has made 
in the story itself. These can be best shown by giving 
a brief synopsis of Boccaccio's poem as it unfolds itself 
book by book. 

;rBook I narrates in 1104 lines what Chaucer sum- 
marizes in a dozen : — 

How wonnen was the regne of Femenye 

By Theseus, and by his chivalrye. 

Book II devotes 792 lines to the home-coming of The- 
seus, and to his expedition against Thebes, which re- 
sults in the capture of Palemone and Arcita, and their 
condemnation to lifelong imprisonment. In the third 
I jook the r eal action of th f ntor^r boding AfteiLiL-yiiar 
of imprisoi TTipntj t.lif> twt^ kinsmen catch fatal sight of 
Eni ilia as she walks jnj ier g arden, but with Boccaccio 
it is Arnitn. who sees her first, not Palemone ; wliile 
leEmilia of the Italian is not, like Chaucer's Emily, 



THE KNIGHT'S TALE 165 

so wholly u nconscious that she has won the atte ntion 
of the The ban captives. As_Axcita,. after_jns_release, 
rides away from Athens, Emilia stands on a balcony 
and reced es his inip assioned farewell. 

T he whole of BookTV^Ts cT e.YQted to Arcita. his love- 
longing^ in exil e, his return to Theseus's court u nder 
the assumed name of Penteo. The sorrows _of_the love- 
lorn knight, which _C haucer pa s^efiu^over^ half humor- 
otrgl}'^, are detail ed by j 3occaccla,with_^U his native 
sentiment^ Very ^T^nTa/>fpristif> is pitari^a^^^ in which 
A rcita, who has co me_ iiLJiis w^Jiderings to^ .J^gina, 
staji^[s_on jthfiL-SfiashoEe^all alone, and is comforted by 
the breeze which blows from Athens, the breeze which 
has J3een_very nfiar.^toJEmilia. Book V^ which brin gs 
t he action up to the point of These us s interventio n and 
t^_jQrdainIng of the tournament, differs only slightly 
f rom Chauc e Fs~gtory, save that t he es cape of PaTem one 
is ng^rrated in detail. In the following bo ok the two 
kinsmen collect their^^anrpKms-t-Jaut instead of the 
t wo vivid descriptions of K'T^P'trins and TiygiiT-gp^^ Boc- 
caccio devotes four hundred lines to a catalogue of the 
heroes who take part on the two sides. Book VII is 
given up to the prayers of Arcita, Palemone, and 
Emilia, and to the description of the amphitheatre. 
In the description of the tournament, which fills Book 
VIII, Chaucer's superiority to his original is again 
evident. Instead of his brief but vigorous picture of 
the melee, the Italian furnishes a series of single com- 
bats between the champions of the two sides, warriors 
in whom the reader has no direct interest whatever. 
Meanwhile Emilia looks on, and feels her love go out 
now to the one kinsman, now to the other, according as 
the fortunes of the battle sway now this way, now that. 
In Book IX the victor Arcita is_hjirL.tQ, death through 
tSe device of Veiryp nnd^er hell-sent fury. In place 



166 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

of the brief, deeply pathetic speech in which Chaucer's 
Arcite takes leave of friend and loved one, Boccaccio, 
in Book X, draws a long death-bed scene, less effec- 
tive because of its greater length. The 728 verses of 
Book XI are devoted to the funeral of Arcita, which 
is celebrated with elaborate games after Virgilian 
model. In the closing book, after an interval of only a 
few weeks, is solemnized the wedding of Palemone and 
Emilia.^ 

The Teseide is by no means a contemptible compo- 
sition ; but, considering the slightness of its plot, it is 
surely much too long. Nor is the essentially romantic, 
sentimental character of the tale in keeping with its 
elaborate epic machinery. In his great condensation, 
in his simplification, in all his changes of detail, Chau- 
cer's superior literary discernment is plainly evident. 
What Chaucer has borrowed is the outline of the tale ; 
the execution is mainly his own. Mr. Henry Ward has 
shown 2 that of Chaucer's 2250 lines, 270 are directly 
translated from Boccaccio, 374 are somewhat closely 
imitated, leaving three quarters of Chaucer's lines for 
which no parallel is found in Boccaccio. 

The source of the Teseide has never been discov- 
ered. Boccaccio took many suggestions from the The- 
hais of Statins ; but these are of minor importance. 
Scholars are inclined to believe that the ultimate 
source was a Greek prose romance of the Byzantine 
period, which may have reached Boccaccio in a Latin 
translation. 

^ In preparing' this brief synopsis, I have made frequent use of the 
full outline of the poem given by Koerting in Boccaccio'' s Leben und 
Werke, pp. 594-615. The best edition of the Teseide is that given in 
vol. ix of Opere Volgari di Giovanni Boccaccio, ed. Moutier, Firenze, 
1831. 

^ Temporary Preface to the Six-Text edition of the Canterbury Tales, 
p. 104. 



THE KNIGHT'S TALE 167 

A much vexed question of Chaucerian scholarship is 
that which concerns itself with the date of composition 
of the Jvniqht's Tale. That Chaucer had al- „ ^ . 

, . . . Date of 

ready written the story of Palamon and Arcite Composi- 
before the Canterbury Tales was planned, 
we know beyond doubt from the passage in the Pro- 
logue to the Legend of Good Women, where the poet 
recites a list of the works in which he had spoken 
nobly of woman and of love : — 

And al the love of Palamon and Arcyte 
Of Thebes, thogh the story is knoweu lyte. 

Since the Legend is probably to be assigned to the 
year 1385 or 1386, the original Palamon and Arcite 
must have been written before that date ; and, from its 
general community of theme and manner with Troilus 
and Criseyde, we shall be ready to assume that the two 
works were undertaken at about the same time, i. e. 
circa 1380-82, Each is a reworking of one of Boc- 
caccio's youthful epics ; in each we find the same blend- 
ing of pathos and satirical humor. But we are struck 
at once by a startling difference in the way in which 
the original has been adapted in the two cases : T7'ol- 
lus is considerably longer than the Filostrato,^ while 
in the Knight! 8 Tale the bulk of the original has been 
reduced to one fifth. 

This suggests at once the question how far Chaucer 
altered his earlier composition in adapting it to its 
present position in the Canterhury Tales. Tyrwhitt, 
whose mere guesses are to be treated with respect, 
thought it ' not impossible that at first it was a mere 
translation of the Theseida of Boccace.' This guess 
was taken up by Ten Brink and Koch in Germany, 
and developed into an elaborate theory, which has until 
recent years been pretty generally accepted. Ten Brink 

1 C£. above, p. 103. 



168 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

and Koch have shown that the KnigMs Tale is not 
the only work in which Chaucer is indebted to the 
Teseide of Boccaccio. Fairly literal translations from 
the poem, all in the seven-line stanza, occur in the Par- 
liament of Fowls, 11. 183-294 (sixteen stanzas), in 
Anellda and Arcite, 11. 1-70 (ten stanzas), and in 
Troilus, 5. 1807-1827 (three stanzas). On the basis of 
this fact, it has been argued that the original Palamon 
and Arcite was a faithful paraphrase of the Teseide 
in seven-line stanzas, written earlier than the three 
poems just mentioned; that Chaucer was dissatisfied 
with his work, and wished to suppress it ; but that 
he utilized portions of it in other works, as indicated 
above, and later worked it over in a greatly abridged 
form for the Knight's Tale.^ 

The most obvious objection to this theory is that 
Chaucer could not have suppressed a work of such 
length and importance, even if he had had any good 
reason to do so. A more reasonable explanation of the 
matter is that the poem referred to in the Legend of 
Good Women was in metre and in scope essentially 
what we know as the KnigMs Tale; that Chaucer 
recognized from the first the desirability of condens- 
ing his original; but that he incorporated several 
passages of the Teseide, not used in his version of the 
story, into other poems on which he was engaged at 
about the same time.^ 

The Knight has wandered far and wide, and has 
seen many cities of men, in Russia, in Asia, 
Knight's in Africa; but he has lived and traveled and 
fought in the fair dream of chivalry, — 

1 For a full statement of the argument, see Ten Brink's Studien, pp. 
39-70, and the paper by Koch in Englische Studien, 1. 249-293. (Re- 
printed in English in Essays on Chaucer, pp. 357-415.) 

'^ This is the opinion of Mr. F. J. Mather, ' On the Date of the Knight's 
Tale,' Furnivall Miscellany, pp. 301-313. 



THE KNIGHT'S TALE 169 

Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisye ; 
he is as unworldly as his squire-son. As with Tenny- 
son's Sir Percivale, — 

All men, to one so bound by such a vow, 
And women were as phantoms. 

He tells no tale of his own wanderings, his own expe- 
rience ; he hardly deals with real men and women at 

all. Tji s t-nlf ^'° ^^ <»ln'valrnna irUalc^ nf ^!■r^\ghf^ J q^. 

noiinters long ago, of men an cj women living-; as hft %% 
li ved, in dream and fancy. Even these shadow dr eams 
arehardly_moi' e than moving- pictures in the rich and 
Yfiripdpff;] ^nt^3^ i i ^fl^inT^ nnngti^^ i tQ" thf> w ^ rld nf t liP 
knight-er rant. Tjjf ift nppinin g words of the tal e. — 

Whylom, as olde stories tellen us, — • 

carry us far away from present-day realities, far from 
the Tabard Inn and its varied company, into the land 
of story and of long ago. It is to ancient Athens and 
the days of Theseus that we are bidden go, but to 
an Athens which the student of classical archaeology 
will hardly recognize. Though, in its simplicity and 
restraint, the story is by no means un-Hellenic, the 
manners and customs are for the most part those of 
mediaeval chivalry ; and we had best forget forthwith > 
all we know of ancient Greece. Neither Chaucer nor 
his knight knew much, or recked much, of antiquarian 
lore. 

If we are to read the KnigMs Tale in the spirit 
in which Chaucer conceived it, we must give ourselves 
up to the spirit of romance ; we must not look for 
subtle characterization, nor for strict probability of 
action ; we must delight in the fair shows of things, 
and not ask too many questions. Chaucer can be real- 
istic enough when he so elects ; but here he has chosen 
otherwise. 



170 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

f^W ^h^raoipxs* only qrft hrnngh t before us w ith 

MTiyjtrmTTJripnPfl ; Pnlnmnn^ Armf.P^ F.milyj a nfl ThPifsfi iiS- 

TEoughno t^ characterized subtly, n,s Trnilns n.nri Pnn- 
darus are characterizedj j^alamon ^rttl Arp. itft are-iUDre 
than mere' lay7figures_gUiie-^4eeer^ Qi ne cessity, the 



two kiiisiuen have much in comjnon. They are sisters' 
Soiis ; they bear identical armor ; their lives have been 
speaiiiL-ol osp.st^£eIlo wslyp ; they have sworn a knightly 
vow of perpetual brotherhood. It is not until the fair 
ideal oFTriendship is shattered by the stern reality of 
love that they realize their disparity. Then it is clear, 
in the debate which they hold over Emily, and in their 
subsequent actions, that relatively to o n e a no thfirPala- 
m on is th e_j.1rfta,ii Ler, Arc jtfi-the man of action. It is 
Palamon who insists on the inviolability of thejr vow 
of friendship, and Arcite who, after an attempt at un- 
worthy quibbling, comes out with the plain statement 

that 

Love is a gretter lawe, by my pan, 
Than may be yeve to any erthly man, 

and who recognizes that, since they are both condemned 
to prison perpetually, the question of prior claim to 
Emily is one of purely academic interest. Partly as a 
result of opportunity, partly as a result of character, it 
is Arcite who determines the destiny of the two ; while 
Palamon merely drifts with the current of circumstance. 
The same distinction is observed in AjciteVpr ayer t o 
Mars Joj^-^victory, the definite practical means to the 
attainment of his desires ; while Pajai^on prays Venus 
for success in his Ipy^ leaving the means&f~its'^tain- 
ment*t^the providence of the heavenly synod. But in 
prowess in arms, and in chivalric courtesy, there is not 
a jot of superiority in either ; and the reader of the 
tale, like Emily herself, is unable to decide on which 
he would wish the ultimate success to light. When 



THE KNIGHT'S TALE 171 

the action closes, and the dying Arcite betroths Emily 
to his kinsman-rival, friendship wins its final triumph 
over jealousy, and the two noble kinsmen remain in 
our memory not as dissimilar rivals, but as eternal 
friends, one and indivisible.^ 

^A.^ for Emily, she is a f au- vision of womanly beauty 
and grace, and little more. Only once in the whole 
story,' and that 'when the story is more than half done, 
in her prayer to Diana, do we hear Emily speak. We 
think of her as she roams up and down in her garden 
on the fatal spring morning, gathering flowers ' to make 
a sotil gerland for hir hede,' singing like an angel of 
heaven. We see her beauty and recognize her worth, 
realizing that the love of her may well be strong enough 
to break the friendship of a life ; and yet we know 
her not at all. She is the golden apple of strife, and 
later the victor's prize ; but, consciously and of her 
own volition, she never affects the action of the tale ; 
she does nothing. When Fletcher in the Two Nohle 
iLinsmen tried to develop her into a dramatic charac- 
ter, her inaction and indecision rendered her contemp- 
tible or absurd. Chaucer wisely kept her a vision and a 
name, letting us realize her character only in its effect 
unpn others. V* 

v^Th eseuSj thebraye warrior, the man of anger, who 
is ^et abletoTurn anger to justice when persuaded of 
the right, who can good-naturedly see the absurdity of 
Palamon and Arcite, yet tolerantly remember that 

A man mot been a fool, or yong or old, 

and that he too had been a lover in His youth, is the 
most actual personage in the tale. Ij fe is, moreoj ^r. 
the m ^ive tjowei e £j;h&-pLot; his acts and decisions 
reall}' determine the whole story. 

It is not in the characterization, but in the descrip- 



172 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

tion, that the greatness of the KnigMs Tale resides. 
The_pQ£t a opoua with the T3nlliaft t-pttgeaBt-.Q01ie_yic- 
torious home-coming of JTheseus^ thrown- iirte--sharp 
contra£LJb:E-ifie band of black-clad widowed ladies who 



meelhiro_caL,the_way. A never-to-be-forgotten picture 
is that of Emily roaming in her garden, while 1>te 
kinsmen look down upon her through thick prison-bars. 
The meeting and silent encounter of the cousins in the 
wood, the great theatre with its story-laden oratories, 
the vivid portraits of Emetrius and Lygurge, all the 
varied bustle of preparation, the vigorous description 
of the tournament itself, — these, with occasional pas- 
sages of noble reflection, form the flesh and blood of 
the poem, of which the characters and the action are 
merely the skeleton framework. The KiiigMs Tale is 
preeminently a web of splendidly pictured tapestry, in 
which the eye may take delight, and on which the 
memory may fondly linger. In the dying words of 
Arcite : — 

What is this world ? What asketh men to have ? 
Now with his love, now in his cokle grave 
AUone, withouten any companye, — 

the terrible reality of the mystery of life, its tragedy 
and its pathos, are vividly suggested ; •but it is only 
suggested, as a great painting may touch on what is 
most sacred and most deep. • 

It is this essentially pictorial character of the poem 
which accounts for the slight success of Fletcher's at- 
tempt to translate it into drama, the poetry of action. 
In the Two Noble Kinsmen the slenderness of the 
( plot, and the inconsistency of the characters, which we 
' have accepted without question in the Knight'' s Tale, 
become painfully apparent. The splendid effectiveness 
of silence, which Chaucer has utilized so artistically 
in the first appearance of Emily, and in the encounter 



THE m:LLER and THE REEVE 173 

in the wood, '^ necessarily sacrificed to dramatic exi- 
gencies. The tournament is transacted off the stage, 
and tlie descriptions of the three oratories drop out 
altogether. A reading of Fletcher's drama is of the 
greatest help in enabling one to recognize the distinc- 
tive poetic qualities of Chaucer's narration; just as a j 
comparison with Dryden's brilliant modernization of ; 
the tale will help one to realize the peculiar charm of i 
Chaucer's simple, unassuming diction. 

THE TALES OF THE MILLER AND THE REEVE 

The Knight's long tale of love and chivalry won, as 
it deserved, universal approbation : — 

In al the route nas ther yong ne old 
That he ne seyde it was a noble storie 
And worthy for to drawen to memorie. 

The Host, chuckling with delight over the success- 
ful beginning of his story-telling scheme, turns to the 
Monk and courteously asks him to tell 'sumwhat to 
quyte with the Knightes tale.' J'he choi ce of thft Ml?nk 
was dictated, doubtless, by the Host's punctilious re- 
gard for social rank, the worthy ecclesiastic being after 
the Knight the most dignified personage of the com- 
pany. But since the Monk must of necessity tell a 
serious tale, which could not offer a sufficiently effec- 
tive contrast to the Knight's, the poet, as overruling 
providence of the pilgrimage, devises an interruption 
of the Host's less artistic scheme by the obstreper- 
ous intrusion of the MiUer ; wbQ^hongh so drunk 
tli^f ' unnetbe^ujoon ,. his ..hoSl^-^s^'^-* " ^^ ^^'^ t hatJie 
Inlaws a ^ noble tale/with which to repay the Knight. 
The Host, as complete tavern-keeper, knows not only 
the deference to be paid to men of rank, but also the 
more delicate diplomacy of dealing with a drunken 
man. When his soft-spoken words of deprecation fail 



174 THE POETRY OF CHATJCER 

to silence the unruly Miller, he recognize s that discre- 
tion is the better part of courtesy, and sui*¥ers him to 
proceed. 

After making the quite unnecessary ' protestation ' 
that he is drunk, — a fact of which he is eoiavinced 
by the sound of his own voice, — he_anngu]icfia_ih at his 
t ale is to be of a carpenter_andhis wife, and of hiow^a 
c jerk^m ade a tool pi tHecarpen ter. But this th^.me 
treads~on the^toes of another in the company. Tlhe 
General Prologue tells us of the Reeve that — 

In youthe he lerned hadde a good mister ; 
He was a wel good wrighte, a carpenter. 

So we are prepared for the change from the ' noble 
tale' of the Knight to the ribald tale of the Miller 
by an altercation between drunken Robin and the 
white-haired Osewold, who thinks the tale directed 
against himself. And when the Miller's tale is done, 
the wounded professional pride of the Reeve furnishes 
us with a companion tale of how two Cambridge stu- 
dents got the better of a cheating miller. 

The tales of the Miller and the Reeve are so closely 
linked by this dramatic interlude, and are moreover so 
similar in spirit, that it will be convenient to treat 
them together. 

For neither of these tales do we possess Chaucer's 
immediate source ; but there exist stories sufficiently 
like them to indicate that in neither case did 
Chaucer draw wholly on his own imagination. 
In the Miller's Tale we have a combination of two 
stories originally distinct — the story of a man who is 
made to believe that the great day of reckoning is at 
hand, represented by a German tale of one Valentin 
Schumann, printed in 1559, and the story of Absolon 
and Nicholas, to which an analogue is found in a col- 
lection of novelle by Massuccio di Salerno, who flour- 



THE MILLER AND THE REEVE 175 

ishcd in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Other 
similar tales are found in German and in Latin. ^ 

A tale similar to that of the lieeve is found in Boc- 
caccio's Decameron, Day 9, Nov. 6 ; and still closer to 
Chaucer are two French fahliaux which are reprinted 
in the volume of Originals and Analogues published 
by the Chaucer Society.^ 

The point of strongest resemblance between the 
tales of the Miller and the Reeve is their extreme in- 
decency, an indecency which cannot be wholly The Two 
explained away as due to the frankness of a ''^^^^^ 
less delicate age. Chaucer, himself, was quite aware 
that to many of his readers these tales would be objec- 
tionable. Half seriously, half playfully, he prefaces 
them with an apology in which he warns away the 
squeamish, and at the same time disclaims any per- 
sonal responsibility for the tales. 

What sholde I more seyn, but this Millere 
He nolde his wordes for no man forbere, 
But told his cherles tale in his manere ; 
Me thinketh that I shal reherce it here. 
And therfore every gentil wight I preye, 
For goddes love, demeth nat that I seye 
Of evel entente, but that I moot reherce 
Hir tales alle, be they bettre or werse. 
Or elles falsen som of my matere. 
And therfore, whoso list it nat yhere, 
Turne over the leef, and chese another tale ; 



Avyseth yow and putte me out of blame ; 
And eek men shal nat make ernest of game. 

^ Those who wish to go farther with this not very profitable theme 
may consult the papers of R. Kohler, in Anglia, 1. 38-44, 186-188 ; 2. 
135-136 ; of H. Varnhagen, in Anglia, 7. Anzeiger 81-85 ; of L. Fran- 
kel, in Anglia, 16. 261-263 ; and of E. Kolbing, m Zeitschrift fur ver- 
gleichende Literaturgeschichte, 12. 448-450 ; 13. 112. See also L. Proe- 
seholdt, in Anglia, 7. 117. 

^ Pp. 85-102. For a full discussion of the sources of the Reeve's 
Tale, see the paper by H. Varuhageu, in Englische Studien, 9. 240-266. 



176 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

This is in effect a repetition of the disclaimer given in 
the General Prologue, 11. 725-742 ; what is its valid- 
ity ? That he must rehearse all the tales of all his pil- 
grims precisely as they were told, whatever their char- 
acter, or else ' f alsen som of his matere,' is precisely 
the argument by which the followers of Zola defend 
their ultra-realism. The simple answer to all this is 
found in the fact that the great poets have never con- 
ceived of their function as that of a mere photographer 
or stenographer. They ' imitate nature,' to be sure, but 
with a difference. If it is their duty to observe, it is 
also their duty to select, to adapt, to idealize. It would 
have been perfectly possible to give a true picture of 
the varied humanity which made up the Canterbury 
pilgrimage, without suffering these churls to tell their 
'cherles tales,' which no sophistry can elevate into 
true art. 

I do not believe that Chaucer was in the least 
deceived by this argument. He deliberately chose 
to insert the tales, not as works of art, nor even as a 
necessary part of a great artistic whole, but merely 
as a diverting interlude. Making a rather considerable 
allowance for greater freedom of speech, they are tales 
of the sort which entirely moral men of vigorous na- 
ture have found diverting, and at which the less vigor- 
ous have always raised their eyebrows. Having chosen 
to insert the tales, he playfully answers the anticipated 
charges of the moralist, by assuring him that he wrote 
the tales unwillingly, compelled to do so by the higher 
moral consideration of strict truthfulness. Inasmuch 
1 as the Canterhury Tales are in the main truly great 
\ art, and as these tales are by their nature not true art, 
I think it unfortunate that Chaucer included them ; 
but I am very far from considering them as evidence 
of immoral character in their author. 



THE MILLER AND THE REEVE 177 

What I take to be Chaucer's serious defense of these 
tales is contained in a single line, which concludes the 
passage quoted above : — 

And eek men shal nat make ernest of game. 

In ot h er word^ both these tales narrate practical j okes. 
and their comic interest depends on theclgxfiiiJSKQrking- 
nntjj jid p.nniplete success^J: the trickT In- the Miller' fi 
Tale, for example, the attention is centred on the 
ludicrous gullibility of the jealous carpenter and 
the clever manoeuvring of hende Nicholas, not on the 
immoral purpose for which the trick is devised. So in 
the Heeve's Tale, there is a sort of rough poetic justice 
in the complete discomfiture of the cheating miller; 
and on this, rather than on the immoral character of the 
retribution, the effectiveness of the story depends. It is 
not immorality for immorality's sake, but immorality 
for the joke's sake. Of course, this does not lessen the 
moral blame of the two Cambridge students, when 
seriously considered ; but it very materially lessens 
the immorality of the story. It is only when the reader 
reverses the emphasis, when, in Chaucer's words, he 
makes earnest of game, that the tales become actively 
immoral. 

In the Miller's Tale, in particular, the attention is 
diverted from the lustful and nasty features of the story, 
to the brilliant characterizations, and to the consummate 
skill with which the narrative is transacted. In none of 
Chaucer's tales is there more convincing proof of his 
mastery of the technique of story-telling. The tale con- 
sists of two comic intrigues combined into a single unity. 
It will be worth while to notice with some particularity 
the steps by which this end is attained. 

Since Nicholas is to be the prime mover of the action, 
without whose machinations neither plot could have 



178 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

matured, the first thirty-three lines of the tale are de- 
voted to a vivid description of his person and personality. 
The carpenter, as passive centre of the plot, is next de- 
scribed more briefly. Nearly forty lines are then devoted 
to a description of Alisoun, whose attractiveness consti- 
tutes the causa causans for both intrigues. These por- 
traits, and that of Absolon which follows a little later, 
are done with all the skill which marks the portraiture 
of the General Prologue. After another forty lines, in 
which the relations between Nicholas and Alisoun are 
established, the main action is fully launched, and the 
natural pause which ensues is utilized for the introduc- 
tion of the second action. Absolon is described, and his 
persistent attentions to Alisoun are recorded, eighty- 
four lines sufficing to set the new intrigue afoot. Re- 
suming the thread of the main argument, some two 
hundred and fifty lines are devoted to the clever scheme 
by which the carpenter is beguiled into believing that 
a second Noah's flood is toward, and the two lovers at- 
tain their end. Particularly rich in humor is the scene 
where Nicholas, in feigned trance, predicts the coming 
deluge, a prediction for which we have been artistically 
prepared by the earlier statement that all Nicholas's 
fancy ' was turned for to lerne astrologye.' Again there 
is a natural pause in the action, in which the story 
reverts to Absolon. Because the carpenter, in instant 
fear of the flood which is at hand, has kept all day to 
his house, Absolon is led to believe that he is from 
home, and consequently chooses this particular night 
to pay his addresses. He goes to Alisoun's window, 
where he is duped, and has his revenge. This section 
of the tale occupies about a hundred and sixty lines. 
Thirty-eight lines now suffice to end the tale. The 
frantic cry of ' Water ! ' uttered by Nicholas as a result 
of Absolon's revenge, wakes the sleeping carpenter, and, 



THE COOK'S TALE 179 

fitting in with his expectation of a flood, leads him to 
cut the ropes which suspend his ark of safety, thus 
bringing about the catastrophe of the main action. 

It is certainly a pity that such excellent skill was 
expended on a story which many of Chaucer's readers 
will prefer to skip ; and yet, as we have seen, it is this 
very skill which does most to minimize the objection- 
able character of the tale. 

THE cook's tale 
Whoever may have been offended at the freedom of 
the Reeve's Tale, jolly Hodge of Ware was not of the 
strait-laced sect : — 

The Cook of Loudon, whyl the Reve spak, 
For joye, him thoughts, he clawed him on the bak, 
'Ha ! ha !' quod he, 'for Cristes passioun, 
This miller hadde a sharp conclusioun 
Upon his argument of herbergage ! ' 

Perhaps, in his vocation of cook, he has had to do with 
cheating millers, and consequently finds special relish 
in the tale. He volunteers a ' litel jape that fil in our 
citee,' which is to deal, saving the presence of mine 
host, with a London ' hostileer.' After some playful 
allusions to the tricks of the culinary profession, the 
Host bids him proceed. 

The tale of the Cook is a mere fragment, extending 
only to fifty-eight lines, and though we have a fine 
piece of portraiture in the picture of Perkin Revellour, 
who is to be the hero, and a fairly complete mise en 
scene, we have not enough of the story to form any 
guess as to its plot. We can only surmise that it is to 
be a ' merry ' tale of the same general type as those 
of the Miller and the Reeve. Perhaps it was a recog- 
nition of the fact that three tales of this sort on end 
would be too larjje a dose of ' mirth ' that caused the 



180 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

poet to abandon it ; for, as the old scribe says, ' Of 
this Cokes tale maked Chaucer na more.' 

There is a spurious tale, certainly not by Chaucer, 
which some of the manuscripts, and the old editions, 
insert after this fragment under the title of The Cokes 
Tale of Gamelyn; but a discussion of this tale, which 
has some interest because of its relation to Shakespeare's 
As You Like It, is outside the scope of the present 
work.^ 

^ The tale may be found in the appendix to vol. iv of Skeat's Ox- 
ford Chaucer. For a discussion of it, see the article by E. Lindner, in 
Englische Studien, 2. 94-114, 321-343. 



CHAPTEE X 
THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUP B 

THE MAN OF LAW'S TALE 

The first day's journey had brought the band of pil- 
grims only fifteen miles on their way ; and the night 
had been spent at the little town of Dartford in Kent.* 
Either the company had slept long and started late on 
the second day's ride, or the beauty of a sunny morn- 
ing in mid-April had made the diversion of story-tell- 
ing superfluous; for it is already ten o'clock when 
the Host suddenly turns his horse about, and reminds 
his fellow-voyagers that a fourth part of the day is 
already spent, and time is wasting. The Man of Law 
is called on to begin the entertainment of the day. As 
a lawyer, he is too well schooled in the law of contracts 
to refuse assent : — 

' To breke forward is not myn entente. 
Bihest is dette, and I wol holde fayn 
Al my biheste ; I can no better seyn ; ' 

but since the tale he is minded to tell is in effect the 
legend of a good woman, he feels not unnatural hesi- 
tation in narrating it, when Chaucer, as all the pilgrims 
know, has written a whole volume of such legends. 

' I can right now no thrifty tale seyn, 
But Chaucer, though he can but lewedly 
On metres and on ryming craftily,'^ 

1 Cf. p. 155. 

2 Tlie depreciation of Chaucer's skill is to be considered a bit of the 
poet's half -humorous modesty, rather than as representing dramatically 
the opinion of the Man of Law. 



182 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Hath seyd hem in swich English as he can 
Of olde tyme, as knoweth many a man. 
And if he have not seyd hem, leve brother, 
In o book, he hathe seyd hem in another.' 

Hereupon follows a catalogue of women faithful in 
love whose stories Chaucer had narrated, or planned 
to narrate, in the Legend of Good Women, referred to 
here as the Seintes Legende of Cupyde. How shall he, 
the Man of Law, presume to rival such a master in 
this particular art? Ovid's story of the daughters of 
Pierus who dared contend with the Muses, and were 
for their presumption turned into chattering magpies, 
should give him pause : — 

' But nathelees, I recche noght a bene 
Though I come after him with hawe-bake ; 
I speke in prose, and lat him rymes make.' 
And with that word he, with a sobre chare, 
Bigan his tale, as ye shal after here. 

Though many of the incidents of the tale of Con- 
stance are found in other, earlier stories, Chaucer's 
immediate source was the Anglo-Norman 
Chronicle of the Englishman, Nicholas Tri- 
vet, a voluminous English scholar and historian, who 
flourished in the first half of the fourteenth century.^ 
Trivet's chronicle, written in the Anglo-Norman French 
of the English court, devotes a long section to the his- 
tory of ' la pucele Constaunce,' - the account agreeing 
in all important details with that given by Chaucer. 
Chaucer has very considerably condensed the story, has 

1 The Dictionary of National Biography, following the early bio- 
graphers, Leland and Bale, gives the date of his death as 1328 ; but 
since his chronicle includes the reign of Pope John XXII, who died in 
1334, the date is certainly wrong. 

^ As reprinted in Originals and Analogues, the story occupies 25 
pages. The text is provided with a running summary and a translation 
in English (pp. 1-53). 



THE MAN OF LAW'S TALE 183 

added many original passages of a reflective or lyrical 
character, and has altered some of the minor details.^ 
Thus, for example, Trivet narrates in detail how King 
Alia slew his mother with his own hands,^ an episode 
which Chaucer has preferred to soften down into a mere 
vague statement. If the student will take the trouble 
to pick out Chaucer's original additions to the tale, as 
indicated in the foot-note, he will find that they com- 
prise all the most beautiful passages in the tale. Thus, 
when Constance and her child are put to sea in the rud- 
derless boat. Trivet merely says : ' The mariners with 
great grief commended her to God, praying that she 
might again return to land.' It is Chaucer who has 
added the sublimely beautiful lines (825-868) which 
show her noble resignation, and supreme trust in God. 
Of what wondrous pathos is the stanza : — 

Hir litel child lay weping iu hir arm, 
And kneling, pitously to him she seyde, 
'Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee non harm.' 
With that hir kerchef of hir heed she breyde, 
And over his litel yen she it leyde ; 
And in hir arm she luUeth it ful faste, 
And into heven hir yen up she caste. 

Chaucer's less gifted contemporary, John Gower, has 
also told the story of Constance in the second book 
of his Confessio Amantis ; but that both poets went 

1 About 350 lines of the 1029 comprising the tale are not represented 
in Trivet. Four of the added stanzas (11. 421-427, 771-777, 925-931, 
1135-1141) are translated from the De Contemptu Mundioi Pope Inno- 
cent III, a work of which Chaucer tells us (Prologue to the Legend of 
Good Women, A version, 11. 414-415) that he had made a transla- 
tion (now lost). One stanza (11. S13-819) is from Boethius. The rest is 
Chaucer's own. Chaucer's additions comprise lines 190-203 ; 270-287 
295-315; 330-343; .351-371; 400-410; 421-427; 449-462; 470-.504 
631-G58; 701-714; 771-784; 811-819; 825-868; 925-945; 1037-1043 
1052-1078; 1132-1141. 

2 ' And with that he cut off her head and hewed her body all to pieces 
as she lay naked iu her bed ' (p. 38). 



184 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

independently to Trivet is proved by the fact that each 
gives statements found in Trivet, but not found in the 
other. There are, however, a number of instances in 
which Chaucer and Gower narrate the same fact not 
found in Trivet ; and this leads us to believe that in 
addition to using Trivet, one poet or the other made 
use of his contemporary's version.^ Since we know from 
the excellent edition of Gower by Mr. G. C. Macaulay 
that the Confessio Amantis was first published in 1390, 
and not in 1382-85 as was formerly believed, while 
the date usually accepted for the inception of the Can- 
terbury Tales is 1387, whatever borrowing there was, 
was done by Gower.^ The case becomes all the stronger 
if we accept the theory which sees in the seven-line 
stanzas of the Man of Law's Tale proof that it was 
composed at a period considerably earlier than that of 
the Canterbury Tales as a whole. 

The Man of Law's statement that he learned the 
story from a merchant is not to be taken seriously ; 

^ For a full discussion of the question, see the papers by E. Liicke, 
' Das Leben der Constaaze bei Trivet, Gower, und Chaucer,' in Anglia, 
14. 77-122, 147-185. ' On the basis of the comparison I have given, and 
of the passages cited in which, on tlie one hand Chaucer agrees with 
Trivet, and on the other hand Gower agrees with Chaucer, I believe it 
may be considered proved that Chaucer made use of Trivet and also of 
Gower ' (p. 185). 

^ The establishment of the correct date for the first edition of the 
Confessio Amantis disposes effectually of the fanciful story of a falling 
out between Gower and Chaucer anent the tale of Constance, given at 
length by Professor Skeat in the Oxford Chaticer, vol. iii, pp. 413-414. 
Similarly, it is no longer possible to believe that 11. 77-89 of the intro- 
duction to the Man of Law^s Tale are aimed at Gower, a belief for 
which there was never any satisfactory foundation. Though the tale of 
Canacee, there condemned, is told by Gower, it is also lold by Ovid ; 
and the tale of ' Tyro ApoUonius ' was widely current before Gower 
introduced it into the last book of his Confessio Amantis. Moreover, 
the particular episode of this last-named tale which the Man of Law 
finds so horrible is not given by Gower at all. Thus falls a fine-spun 
theory, which we are glad to know is false. 



THE MAN OF LAW'S TALE 185 

but it suggests, none the less, the way in which many 
media3val tales were transplanted from one country to 
another. 

Looked at merely as a narrative, the tale has but 
little claim to greatness. It consists of a series of im- 
probable episodes, bound together merely by 
the accident that they all happen to the same as a work 
heroine. Though in the fact that the fleet 
which eventually saves Constance, and brings her back 
to Rome, had been dispatched by the emperor on a 
punitive expedition against the 'cursed wikked Sow- 
danesse,' we see an attempt to link the beginning of 
the tale with its close, there is too much of accident, 
and too little of direct causal connection, in the events 
of the tale to leave it any organic unity. The episode 
of the steward of the ' hethen castel,' who comes down 
to Constance's ship and tries to violate her, is in no 
way connected with what precedes or follows. The tale 
has all the structural defects of the typical romance 
or saint's legend. 

What raises this legend into the realm of true art, 
and even gives to it a high degree of spiritual unity, 
is the wonderfully beautiful personality of Constance. 
There is little to be said of this character by way of 
analysis ; there is no baffling problem of motives nor 
complexity of warring qualities to fascinate the intel- 
lect, no development of character under stress of cir- 
cumstance ; from the first she is utterly transparent, 
utterly perfect. We see her in prosperity»-w » o oc he r 
i n bitterest adverstCyTiP'what ^^he^belJpvpg i:^ be the 
h^ ir of her death : sli £-i«-4he-~5m»e--^latay»r-tfflfiaeved. 
u nshaken. The ( rxmxl Chiiblian virtuus— of hnmility. 
faith, hope, charity, sum up the whole_of.Jier_nature ; 
b^t^i g'~gtgj s— sb« ^stee rs_Jier rudJprlPiss hrn^t a^s_^ft 
sails in the salt sea ; by these she lives in the court of 



186 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

OTTipnrnr fmi\ hinr- So little is she moved by outward 
circumstance, that the mere events of the story sink 
into insignificance ; we forget their improbability, or 
rather, in the presence of such superhuman perfection, 
the supernatural seems merely natural. Chaucer does 
not try to explain these miracles away; he accepts 
them frankly, even gladly : — 

Men mighten asken why she was not slayn ? 
Eek at the feste who mighte hir body save ? 
And I answere to that demaunde agayu, 
Who saved Daniel in the horrible cave ? 

Or again, ' Who kepte hir fro the drenching in the see? ' 
Chaucer asks, and answers : — 

Who bad the foure spirits of tempest, 
That power han t'anoyen land and see, 
' Bothe north and south, and also west and est, 
Anoyeth neither see, ne land, ne tree ? ' 
Sothly, the comaundour of that was he, 
That fro the tempest ay this womman kepte 
As wel whan that she wook as whan she slepte. 

When we see her set adrift again with her ' litel sone,' 
weeping piteously over his distress though not her own, 
we are inevitably reminded of another Mater Dolorosa, 
the ' Moder and mayde bright, Marye,' to whom she 
prays. We are quite ready to agree with Ten Brink 
when he says: 'The heroine here appears almost a 
personification of Christianity itself, such as it comes 
to heathen nations, is maligned and persecuted, yet, in 
the strength of its Founder, endures in patience and 
finally remains victorious.' ^ Be it remembered, how- 
ever, that she is more than a personification, a per- 
sonality. 

I fancy that we are often inclined to underestimate 
the art which is requisite to the depiction of such a 
1 Hist. Eng. Lit. (Eng. trans.) 2. 156. 



THE SHIPMAN'S TALE 187 

fissure as that of Constance. It is precisely in its sim- 
plicity, its absence of all complexity, that the difficulty 
of the portrayal resides. By ' character ' we mean the 
markings or traits which distinguish one individual 
from another, or rather from our somewhat vaguely 
conceived ' normal ' man or woman. In bidding us 
pattern our imperfect natures after the one perfect 
nature, Christianity bids us shake off our personal 
idiosyncrasies, the traits or markings — blemishes, if 
you will — which distinguish us from our pattern. It fol- 
lows logically that, if we were able to carry out this 
Christian ideal, we should lose the distinguishing- 
traits which constitute our character as individuals. 
Constance has attained the ideal ; she is perfect ; and 
consequently her ' character ' seems to us shadowy or 
unreal. In a sense she has no character. To depict 
such a nature as this in its ideal perfection, and yet 
to make us feel the force of her personality, and love 
her and sympathize with her, to accomplish this, is 
a greater artistic triumph than to create a Criseyde. 
Chaucer is here working in the spirit of the Christian 
Middle Age, which loved the perfect, the universal ; it 
was the Renaissance which taught us to set such store 
by the necessarily imperfect individual. 

THE SHIPMAN'S TALE 

The tale of Constance has given the lie to the Man 
of Law's modest statement that he knows no ' thrifty ' 
tale. At its conclusion the Host rises in his stirrups 
with the exclamation : — 

* This was a thrifty tale for the uoues ! ' 

He is apparently in the mood for 'thrifty' tales, for 
he turns next to the parish priest, the ' povre persoun 
of a toun,' and demands of him a tale. But he has 



188 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

unfortunately larded his request with two of the oaths 
without which his tongue seldom wags ; and the good 
parson is scandalized : — 

The Persone him answerde, * ben'cite ! 
What eyleth the man so sinfully to swere ? ' 

Such unreasonable objection to the picturesque in 
language can come only from a follower of the new 
sect of Wiclif. The Host makes no great pretense to 
religion ; but he hates a heretic ; he ' smells a loller in 
the wind,' and dreads a ' predicacioun ' after the man- 
ner of Wiclif's itinerant preachers. There is another 
staunch upholder of orthodoxy in the person of the 
conscienceless Shipman. 

* He shal no gospel glosen heer ne teche. 
We leve alle, in the grete god,' quod he. 

* He wolde sowen som difficultee 

Or springen cokkel in our clene corn.' * 

Such a calamity the Shipman stands ready to avert by 
telling a tale himself, which he promises shall be free 
from philosophy or other scientific lore. One need not 
dilate on the rich humor of this episode, wherein Chau- 
cer chooses the Host and the Shipman as the bitterest 
opponents of heretical doctrine. 

We do not know the immediate source of the Ship- 
marl's Tale. A similar story is found in the Decam- 
eron^ Day 8, Nov. 1 ; but Chaucer's setting 
of the tale near Paris indicates that he 
derived it from a French fabliau now lost. Save for 
its general tone of loose morality, there is no special 
appropriateness in assigning the tale to the Shipman ; 

1 The term ' loller ' or ' loUard,' derisively applied to the f oUowera 
of Wiclif, probably means only a foolish talker ; but it was popularly 
associated with the Latin lollium, tares, with reference to the parable 
of the tares sown among the wheat. 



THE SHIPMAN'S TALE 189 

and the use of the first person pronoun plural in the 
passage beginning — 

He moot us clothe, and he moot us arraye, 

shows that it was originally intended for one of the 
female members of the company, who can have been 
no other than the Wife of Bath. Appai'ently Chaucer 
first wrote the tale for her, and then lighting on another 
story which should more fully reveal his conception of 
her character, utilized the rejected tale for the Ship- 
man, forgetting to eliminate the inconsistent passage 
referred to above. 

Though much more delicate than the tales of the 
Miller and the Reeve, the tale of the Shipman is essen- j 
tially more immoral. Hende Nicholas re- TbeShip- ' 
ceives a righteous retribution for his deeds; man's 
and the two Cambridge students have at 
least a certain provocation for theirs. The Monk, Dan 
John, is false not only to his professions as a man of , >/ 
God, but violates also the sacred laws of hospitality 
and of common gratitude. He cultivates the friend- / 
ship of the worthy merchant merely that he may live ,/ 
on him, and, not content with that, deliberately plays 
him false with his wife. With equal nonchalance he' 
leaves the woman he has corrupted to extricate herself 
as best she can from an exceedingly embarrassing situ- 
ation. The story ends with the laugh all on his side. 
The moral of the tale seems to be, as Mr. Snell has ., 
put it, ' that adultery is a very amusing and profitable aT^j- 
game, provided that it is not found out.' The intrigue" 
is, of course, a clever one, the actors are clearly char- 
acterized, and the narrative is well conducted ; but 
neither the intrigue, nor the art of the tale, is brilliant 
enough to blind us, even partially, to the disagreeable 
picture of treachery and lust. The chief artistic merit 



190 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

of the piece consists in the realistic picture it gives of 
a well-to-do bourgeois household, and of the business 
methods of a fourteenth-century merchant, such as 
Chaucer must have seen often at the London Custom 
House. 

l^ gE prior ess's tale 
Very different is the tale of the gentle Prioress 
which follows. With all courtesy, the usually rough- 
spoken Host turns to Madame Eglantine : — 

* My lady Prioresse, by your leve, 
So that I wiste I sholde yew nat greve, 
I wolde demen that ye tellen sholde 
A tale uext, if so were that ye wolde. 
Now wol ye vouchesauf , my lady dere ? ' 

And the courteous request meets with courteous assent. 
As set forth in the General Prologue, Madame Eg- 
lantine's character is compounded of many affectations. 
Scrupvdons jh— 4retL ^dress and tab le. Jnanners. priding 
herself on her__CQ^^"^^^'^f^ f^f «" ?^inti£jm3J^d__Nor"^n" 
TirfjT^^^wWjrRhft supp oses is st ill_tbej'rench of fash- 
ionable society^jn^llJJiingstjyjingpauiS-i^^ tre- 
fete_ciierfi_Gf_court,' she standa-aa_thejtypical superior of 
a_young-ladies'^eho^^ Next to this quality of trtter 
' seemliness ' comesjbhej^ood ladYja-i^en derness of he art : 

She wolde wepe, if that she sawe a mous 
Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde. 

As seen superficially at the Tabard Inn, she is dis- 
stinctly likeable, but also a little ridiculous. The true 
measure of her character is to be found in the fuller 
revelation of her tale. She might have been expected 
to tell a courtly tale, which should establish her repu- 
tation as an accomplished woman of the world ; but her 
affectations are only on the surface. Her legend of the 
' litel clergeon ' breathes the spirit of earnest, heart- 



THE PRIORESS'S TALE 191 

felt religion, and shows that the tenderness of her 
heart is not confined to the sufferings of a wounded 
mouse or a favorite lap-dog, but makes her keenly 
susceptible to the truest and deepest pathos. Instead 
of the calm assurance and self-confidence of a lady- 
superior, we find in her invocation of the Blessed Vir- 
gin a sincere Christian humility : — 

' My conning is so wayk, o blisf ul quene, 
For to declare thy grete worthiaesse, 
That I ne may the weighte nat susteue, 
But as a child of twelf mouthe old or lesse, 
That can unnethes any word expresse, 
Right so fare 1, and therfor I yow preye, 
Gydeth my song that I shal of yow seye.' 

To understand the spirit which gave rise to stories 
such as that told by the Prioress, we must think our- 
selves back into a time when the antipathy 

Sources* 

which some Christians now feel against the 
Jewish race on purely social grounds had all the force 
of a religious passion. ' His blood be on us and on 
our children,' shouted the multitude of Jerusalem ; and 
the multitude of mediaeval Europe felt it a sacred duty 
that the blood-guiltiness should be brought home to 
the self-cursed race. The pages of European history 
are stained with many stories of senseless persecution, 
which, though due doubtless in part to the fact that 
the Jews were rich while the Christians among whom 
they lived were poor, were possible only because of 
this mistaken religious zeal. 

It is entirely possible that, stung into fury by these 
persecutions, the Jews may have sought revenge by the 
treacherous murder of Christian children. So wide- 
spread a belief in such a murderous practice could 
hardly have sprung up without some sort of founda- 
tion. But be that as it may, all Europe firmly believed 



192 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

that, inspired by fierce hatred of Christ, the Jews, in 
Passion Week particularly, were in the habit of reeu- 
acting the scenes of the crucifixion, taking as their 
victim any Christian child whom they were able to 
decoy into their houses. If the child was not crucified, 
he was murdered outright, and his blood was used in 
some gruesome religious ceremony. 

The earliest story of a Christian child murdered by 
Jews comes from the first quarter of the fifth century, 
and is narrated in Greek by the Church historian Soc- 
rates. As translated by Dr. James of Cambridge,^ the 
story runs as follows : ' Now a little after this the Jews 
paid the penalty for further lawless acts against the 
Christians. At Inmestar, a place so-called, which lies 
between Chalcis and Antioch in Syria, the Jews were 
in the habit of celebrating certain sports among them- 
selves : and, whereas they frequently did many foolish 
actions in the course of their sports, they were put 
beyond themselves (on this occasion) by drunkenness, 
and began deriding Christians and even Christ him- 
self in their games. They derided the Cross and those 
who hoped in the Crucified, and they hit upon this plan. 
They took a Christian child and bound him to a cross 
and hung him up ; and to begin with they mocked and 
derided him for some time ; but after a short space they 
lost control of themselves, and so ill-treated the child 
that they killed him. Hereupon ensued a bitter conflict 
between them and the Christians.' 

There seems to have been no recurrence of this crime, 
either in fact or in fiction, until the year 1144, when 
occurred the famous ' martyrdom ' of St. William of 

^ The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, by Thomas of 
Monmouth, edited by Jessopp and James, Cambridge, 1896, p. Ixiii. 
To the Introduction of this volume I am indebted for much valuable 
information about the leirend. 



THE PRIORESS'S TALE 193 

Norwich. According to the life of St. William, written 
a few years later by Thomas of Monmouth, a monk of 
Norwich Priory, William, who had from the first been 
distinguished for his sanctity, was at the age of twelve 
decoyed on Tuesday of Holy Week into a Jew's house 
in Norwich. Here on the following day he was cru- 
cified and pierced in the left side, a crown of. thorns 
upon his forehead. On Good Friday his body was put 
in a sack and carried by the murderers to Thorpe 
Wood, where it was hanged to a tree. It was finally 
removed to the Monks' Cemetery in Norwich, where 
many miracles were wrought by its agency. That a boy 
named William was actually murdered in Norwich in 
1144, and that his murder was attributed to the Jews, 
we can assert without question ; whether or not any 
Jews were really concerned in the crime is open to 
serious doubt. The fame of his martyrdom, however, 
spread rapidly ; and we begin to hear of similar boy- 
martyrs in England and on the continent. Of these 
the most famous is St. Hugh of Lincoln, alluded to by 
the Prioress at line 1874 of her tale, who, according 
to the chronicle of Matthew Paris, was murdered by 
Jews in the year 1255.^ The tomb of St. Hugh is still 
pointed out to the curious visitor at Lincoln. 

The number of such supposed martyrdoms is very 
large. Adrian Kembter, in a book published at Inns- 
bruck in 1745, enumerates fifty-two, the last of which 
occurred in 1650. Even to-day a belief in such Jewish 
atrocities has survived in Eastern Europe. The New 
York Sun for April 4, 1904, published the following 
statement under date of Vienna, April 3 : ' Die Zeit 
publishes an extraordinary anti-Jewish proclamation 
issued by the Orthodox Association of Odessa, urging 

1 Three ballads on the murder of Hugh of Lincoln are found in Pro- 
fessor Child's English and Scottish Ballads. 



194 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

right-minded Russians to follow the glorious example 
of their brethren who settled their accounts with the 
Jews at Kishineff last Easter. It declares that the vic- 
tory is incomplete, for Satan has incarnated himself in 
the Jews. . . . The proclamation adds : "The Russians 
must aid the government to exterminate the Jews, who 
drink the blood of Russian children." ' ^ 

A legend so widely current as this could not fail to 
find expression in literature, especially when it lent 
itself so readily to human pathos and religious enthu- 
siasm. The Chaucer Society's volume of Originals 
and Analogues contains three stories similar to that 
of the Prioress : the legend of Alphonsus of Lincoln, 
from a volume entitled Fortalitiiim, Fidei, written in 
Latin prose, and dating from the second half of the 
fifteenth century ; a French poem of 75G lines from a 
collection of Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary by 
Gautier de Coincy (1177-1236), telling the legend of 
an English boy murdered by a Jew for singing Gaude 
Maria ; and an English poem of 152 lines of octosyl- 
labic couplets from the Miracles of Oure Lady^ which 
tells of a Paris beggar-boy killed by a Jew for singing 
Alma Redemptoris Mater? 

If we compare these three versions with the Prior--^ 
ess^s Tale, we find that they exhibit several traits in 
common. In each instance the story is told to the 
greater glory of the Virgin Mary ; it is the devotion 
of the boy-martyr to her, shown by the singing of a 
hymn in her honor, which leads to the murderous act 
of the Jew; it is by her agency that the miracle is 
wrought which betrays the murder. In each the child's 

^ My attention was called to this modern analogue by my friend and 
former pupil, Mr. S. B. Hemingway, of New Haven. 

^ The Miracles of Oure Lady have been published by Dr. Karl Horst- 
mann, in Herrig's Archivfur Neuere Sprachen, 56. 223-236. 



THE PRIORESS'S TALE 195 

mother goes to seek him, and is advised of his where- 
abouts by the miraculously continued singing of the 
hymn. The first and third versions agree with Chau- 
cer in specifying the Alma Medemptoris Mater as the 
hymn which excited the wrath of the Jew ; the first 
and second agree in stating that the boy learned the 
hymn at School ; the first and third agree that the mur- 
dered body was thrown into a ' wardrobe ; ' the second 
version diifers from all the rest in that the murdered 
boy is restored to life. Of the three versions the first 
is, on the whole, nearest to Chaucer's; but its date 
precludes the idea that it was Chaucer's source. Chau- 
cer must have used some version of the story which has 
not been preserved to us. For purposes of comjDarison, 
however, a synopsis of the tale may be interesting. 

In the city of Lincoln dwelt a poor widow, who had 
a son ten years old named Alphonsus, whom she sent 
to school. After he had learned to read, he was set to 
study the rudiments of grammar and music. Hearing 
often that splendid antiphon. Alma Redemptoris, sung 
in church, he conceived such great devotion toward the 
Blessed Virgin, and so deeply impressed the antiphon 
upon his memory, that wherever he went, day or night, 
he used to sing it most sweetly with a loud voice. Now 
when he went to his mother's house, or back again to 
school, his way led through the Jewry. One of the Jews 
asked a Christian doctor what was the meaning of that 
song that sounded so sweet. On learning that it was 
a hymn sung to the praise and honor of the Blessed 
Virgin Mary, he began to plot with his fellows how 
they might slay the child who sang it. Waiting for a 
favorable opportunity, they seized on the boy as he 
was going through their quarter, singing the aforesaid 
antiphon with a loud voice. Having cut out his tongue, 
with which he praised the Blessed Virgin, and torn out 



# 



196 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

liis heart, with which he pondered his song, they threw 
his body into their privy. But the Blessed Virgin, who 
is mother of mercy and pity, came to his aid, and placed 
a precious stone in his mouth to take the place of his 
tongue ; and straightway he began to sing, as before, 
the aforesaid hymn, even better and louder than at 
first, nor did he cease day or night from his singing ; 
and in this manner he continued for four days. 

Now his mother, when she saw that he did not come 
home as usual, sought for him throughout the city ; and 
finally, at the end of the four days, she went through 
the Jews' quarter, where her son had been slain, and, 
behold, the voice of her son, singing most sweetly that 
hymn of the Virgin which she had often heard from 
him, sounded in her ears. On hearing it, she shouted 
loudly ; and her shouts gathered a crowd of people, 
who, with the judge of the city, broke into the house 
and took the body away; but never did he cease to 
sing that sweet song, even though he was dead. The 
body was placed on a couch and borne to the cathedral 
church of that town, where the bishop celebrated Mass, 
and bade the congregation pray earnestly that the se- 
cret might be revealed. When the sermon was finished, 
the little boy rose, and stood upon his couch, and took 
a precious stone from his mouth, and told all the people 
what had happened to him, and how the Virgin had 
come to him, and placed the stone in his mouth, that he 
should not cease, though dead, from her praise. Having 
finished, he gave the precious stone to the bishop, that 
it might be placed with the other relics on the altar, 
signed himself with the sign of the holy cross, and 
committed his spirit into the hands of the Saviour. 

The version of the story which Chaucer used prob- 
ably differed in some details from the foregoing. Chau- 
cer's schoolboy lived in a great city of Asia, instead of 



THE PRIORESS'S TALE 197 

in merry Lincoln ; but the more significant of the di- 
v^gences may well be laid to Chaucer's artistic genius. 
>rThe art of the Prioress's Tale is shown chiefly in the 
increased emphasis laid on the human, as opjDosed to 
the supernatural aspects of the story. The chaucer's 
main purpose of the other versions is to show "Version, 
the miraculous power of the Blessed Virgin and the 
black malignancy of the cursed Jews, the murdered 
boy himself being little more than a lay-figure, a ne- 
cessary part of the machinery of the tale. Chaucer 
has slighted neither the glories of the Virgin nor the 
wickedness of the Jews ; but he has subordinated both 
to the deep and tender pathos which centres in his 
' litel clerge^n, seven yeer of age,' his ' martir, souded 
to virginitee.' Eight full stanzas are devoted to the 
setting forth of his sweetly simple child-nature, before 
the tragic murder is even hinted at. We see the little 
clerk on his daily walk to and from his school, bending 
the knee, and saying his Ave Mary^ wherever he saw 
an image of the Mother of Christ. His learning of the 
hymn which is to prove his destruction is shown in 
detail. As he sits in school conning his ' litel book,' he 
hears the Alma Redemptoris sung by older children 
in another room, — 

And, as he dorste, he drough him ner and ner, 
And herkned ay the wordes and the note, 
Til he the firste vers coude al by rote. 

Even the older schoolfellow who teaches him the rest of 
the song, and tells him what it means, is clearly, though 
briefly, characterized : — 

His felaw, which that elder was than he, 

Answerde him thus : ' this song, I have herd seye, 

Was raaked of our blisful lady free, 

Hir to salue, and eek hir for to preye 

To been our help and socour when we deye. 



198 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

I can no more expounde in this matere ; 
I lerne song, I can but smal grammere.' 

He is a likeable boy; but he lacks the divine sjjark of 
his younger comrade. To him the anthem is but part 
of his school task. Not so the ' litel clergeon : ' — 

' And is this song maked in reverence 
Of Cristes moder ? ' seyde this innocent ; 

' Now certes, I wol do my diligence 
To conne it al, er Cristemasse is went ; 
Though that I for my prymer shal he shent, 
And shal be beten thryes in an houre, 
I wol it conne, our lady for to honoure.' 

If we wish to realize Chaucer's power in depicting 
these children, we have only to compare them with 
the utterly impossible children who occasionally appear 
in the plays of Shakespeare. If we wish to appreciate 
the difference between true pathos and mere sentiment 
in the portrayal of childhood, we may compare the 
Prioresses Tale with Tennyson's In the Children's 
Hospital. 

After the murder is done, our attention is called for 
a while to the sorrowing mother, as she seeks her child, 
and to the tender love of the Virgin Mother who suc- 
cors him in his death ; but our ears ring through it all 
with the sweet, clear voice of the martyred boy as he 
sings : — 

Alma Redemptoris Mater, quse pervia cceli 
Porta manes, et Stella maris, succurre cadenti, 
Surgere qui curat, populo : tu quae genuisti, 
Natura mirante, tuum sanctum Genitorem, 
Virgo prius ac posterius, Gabrielis ab ore 
Sumens illud Ave, peccatorum miserere.' 

^ This anthem is sung at Compline from the Saturday evening be- 
fore the first Sunday in Advent until the feast of the Purification 
(Brnnarium Bomaniim, MeehlinisB, ISGG, Pars HiemaUs, p. 147). There 
is another Advent antiphon beginning with the same line (see Skeat's 



SIR THOPAS 199 

SIR TIIOrAS AND THE TALE OF MELIBEUS 

The Prioress's tale of the ' litel clergeon ' has left 
the company, as well it might, in sober mood. It is the 
sort of story that one wants to ponder awhile in rever- 
ent silence. Even the rougher members of the party 
are deeply touched ; and the Host himself, when, feel- 
ing his obligation to keep the journey a merry one, he 
begins to jest and jape again, pays subtle tribute to 
the potency of the spell by speaking in the seven-line 
stanza of the Prioress's Tale. 

The Host begins to look about for the teller of the 
next tale. It must be a tale of mirth to restore the 
light-heartedness of the company; but not a 'mery' 
tale of the coarser sort — that would be too violent a 
shifting of tone. His glance lights on Chaucer, who is 
riding silently, his eyes upon the ground, ' in thought- 
ful or in pensive mood,' attentively listening to all 
that is said, but taking no part in the general conver- 
sation. He is just the man to tell ' som deyntee thing.' 
The poet is apparently traveling incognito ; ' the Host, 
at least, has no inkling as to the identity of the guest 
whom he is entertaining unawares. He begins by 
rallying him good-naturedly, though unceremoniously, 
on his retiring manners, and on the generous propor- 
tions of his figure : — 

* He in the waast is shape as wel as I.' 

There is something ' elvish ' about his countenance, 
says the Host, as though he were a visitant from the 
land of faery, in the world, but not of it. Precisely the 

Oxford Chaucer, 5. 177) ; but that the one given above is the one Chau- 
cer had in mind is rendered probable by the direct translation from it 
f^iven in the third of the three versions of the legend mentioned above. 
1 One wonders whether the Man of Law in his reference to Chaucer 
was equally ig^iorant of the poet's presence. 



200 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

word, we agree, to describe the peculiar elusiveness of 
Chaucer's playful-serious nature. 

If the Host is ignorant of Chaucer's identity, we are 
not ; and when Geoffrey agrees to tell a story, we pre- 
pare ourselves for a tale which shall be the masterpiece 
of the whole collection. But that is not Chaucer's way. 
It is much more modest, and vastly more humorous, 
that he should represent himself as telling a tale which 
should outwear the patience of his hearers before it 
was half told. Di-amatically, too, his choice is entirely 
probable. Suppose a great master of the violin trav- 
eling incognito should be jocosely invited to ' favor the 
company with a tune;' what more likely, granting 
him a keen sense of humor, than that he should tune 
his fiddle and strike up Yankee Doodle or an Irish jig? 
His musical reputation is secure. And so with Chau- 
cer; does not the reader know that all the tales are 
his ? A keen observer would doubtless detect a master's 
touch even in the rendition of Yankee Doodle, and 
the veriest tyro in literature must recognize that the 
burlesqiie of Sir ThojMS is executed with matchless 
poetical skill. 

/To appreciate fully the delicacy and point of this 
literary satire, one should know some of the weary 
„^ ^. romances which so vastly delighted our fore- 

The Rime "^ ° 

of Sir fathers of long ago.^ From morn to noon, 

opas. from noon to dewy eve, one may read of 
Sir Degrevant and Sir Eglamour and Sir Guy of 
Warwick, of Lybeaus Disconus and of the mythical 
Alexander. These romances often have the charm of 
naive simplicity, but they are terribly long-winded, full 

1 A readily accessible example of the species, thoug-h written long 
after Chaucer's death, is the Sqiiyr of Lowe Degre, recently edited for 
the Athenseum Press Series by Professor W. E. Mead. It is by no 
means wholly devoid of interest, and is, as its editor remarks, ' merci- 
f idly brief.' The language will offer no difficulty to a reader of Chaucer. 



SIR THOPAS 201 

of digression and minute description, and, of course, 
highly improbable. 

With such works before him, Chaucer might very 
easily have given us a howling farce, after the manner 
of Shakespeare's 'Pyramus and Thisbe' or Butler's 
Hud'ibras ; but this would not have been quite courte- 
ous to those of his contemporaries who were still writ- 
ing such romances, and to the still larger number who 
still were glad to read them. Neither would it have 
been so effective ; one may easily o'erleap himself in 
the matter of satire, and make his caricature so gross 
that it ceases to convince. Chaucer has performed the 
more delicate and much more difficult task of writing 
an imitation, so true to the original that one might 
easily read it through in a collection of romances with- 
out suspecting its good faith, while so subtly height- 
ening the original traits of diffuseness and essen- 
tial nonsense, that its absurdity becomes immediately 
patent to one who will look a second time. All the 
real charm of naive simplicity Chaucer has reproduced 
intact. We are really disappointed when the tale is 
rudely stopped in the middle of a line. Nearly a hun- 
dred lines pass musically by before anything happens 
at all. At last the much belauded hero finds himself 
face to face with a ' greet geaunt,' and we look to see 
lively action. But no; Sir Thopas politely promises 
to meet the giant to-morrow, and makes his escape. 

And al it was thiirgh goddes gras 
And thurgh his fair beringe. 

We must hear to the minutest detail how he was armed, 
and how he appeared as he rode forth ; and the tale is 
interrupted in its two hundred and seventh line, before 
there is any remote prospect of battle. The broad drift 
of the absurdity is obvious enough ; it is in little touches 
of the deepest bathos, and in the continually recurring 



202 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

tone of petit-hourgeoisie, that the subtler humor re- 
sides. We are to be impressed with the hero's surpass- 
ing comeliness of feature. His face is white as a lily ? 
No, as jpayndemayn^ the choicest quality of wheat 
bread. 'His rode is lyk scarlet in grayn,' i. e. it will 
not come out in the wash. And to cap the stanza : — 

And I yow telle in good certayn, 
He hadde a semely nose. 

The forest through which Childe Thopas rides is in- 
fested with many wild beasts. We look to hear of the 
lion and the pard ; but the next verse explains : — 

Ye, bothe bukke and hare ! 
Or, again, we are to be told how the hero's very person 
inspires fear : — 

For in that contree was ther noon 
That to him dorste ryde or goon, 
Neither wyf ne childe. 

As examples of the bourgeois tone, as Professor Koel- 
biug calls it,^ one may notice that in the catalogue of 
' herbes grete and smale ' which spring in the forest is 
mentioned 

Notemuge to putte in ale. 

Whether it be moyste or stale, 

Or for to leye in cofre. 

So, too, when Sir Thopas wished to swear a mighty oath, 

He swoor on ale and breed, 

How that * the geaunt shal be deed, 

Bityde what bityde ! ' 

But to the Host, that sturdy dispenser of ale and wine, 
the crowning absurdity, beyond which he cannot suffer 
the tale to proceed a stanza, is the statement : — 

Himself drank water of the wel. 
As did the knight Sir Percivel. 

Let him disdain the use of a roof, if he please, and 

^ ' Zu Chaucer's Sir Thopas,' Englische Studien, 11. 495-511. 



THE MONK'S TALE 203 

*liggen in his hode;' but of deliberate choice to drink 
* water of the wel ' — 

* No more of this, for goddes dignitee,' 
Quod cure Loste, ' for thou makest lue 
So wery of thy verray lewednesse 
That, also wisly god my soule blesse, 
Myn eres aken of thy drasty speche.' 

Under this rude interruption Chaucer shows an 
angelic sweetness of temper. It is the best rime he 
knows; but if it is not acceptable to the company, he 
will tell a little thing in prose. From the standpoint 
of the modern reader, at least, Chaucer more than 
revenges himself by inflicting his long ' moral tale ver- 
tuous ' of Melibeus. 

^^he Tale of Melibeus is a translation of a French 
work called Le livre de Melihee et de dame Prudence, 
which is in its turn based on the Liher Con- TheTaieof 
solationis et Consilii of Albertano of Bres- ^eii^^^s- 
cia, who died soon after the middle of the thirteenth 
century. Dame Prudence gives some excellent advice 
to her imimlsive husband, Melibeus, and, to adopt 
the words of Tyrwhitt, the tale ' was probably much 
esteemed in its time ; but in this age of levity, I doubt 
some readers will be apt to regret that he did not rather 
give us the remainder of Sire Thopas.' Here is a good 
opportunity to take Chaucer at his word, when he says 
of another tale : — 

And therfore, whoso list it uat yhere, 

Turne over the leef, and chese another ta^e^r 

THE monk's tale 

The modern reader has doubtless been bored by the 
moralizing tale of Melibeus, if indeed he has not 
skipped it outright. Not so the honest Host. He has 
your true middle-class Englishman's love for moraliz- 



204 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

ing, if not for morality. Moreover, the tale has for him 

a special and personal interest : — 

Our hoste seyde, ' as I am faithful man, 

And by the precious corpus Madrian, 

I hadde lever than a barel ale 

That goode lief my wyf hadde herd this tale ! ' 

She is no Dame Prudence to restrain her husband's 
wrath. On the contrary, she is a sort of bourgeois Lady 
Macbeth, urging on her husband to acts of violence ; 
while in her ability to vilify the poor man, and force 
him to do her will, she is own sister to the Wife of 
Bath. She will make him slay one of the neighbors, 
and bring him to a murderer's death, one of these days, 
the Host predicts : — 

' For I am perilous with knyf in honde, 
Al be it that I dar nat hir withstonde.' 

After this bit of realism, which serves well as a buffer 
between the rather ponderous ' tales ' which precede 
and follow, the Host turns to my lord the Monk, and 
begins to rally him on his general air of well-fed 
prosperity and physical fitness. From such a sleek, 
comfortable-looking gentleman, the Host confidently 
expects a ' mery ' tale. But alas ! for mine Host's dis- 
appointed hopes! The Monk is not, like the reckless 
Pardoner, a man who can suffer his dignity to lie fallow 
for a season. However far he may stray from the 
' reule of Seint Maure or of Seint Beneit,' the dignity 
of his person and his rank allow no unseemliness or 
levity of speech. In his own cell, surrounded by his 
fellow monks, with a plump swan and a good bottle 
before him, his fat sides may have shaken often enough 
with laughter at a merry jest ; but no such relaxation 
is convenient in the promiscuous company of the Can- 
terbury Road. With unruffled patience he hears the 
Host through to the end, suffering his free familiarity 



/ 



THE MONK'S TALE 205 

and scarcely veiled innuendo to pass unanswered and 
unnoticed. 

' I wol doon al my diligence. 
As fer as souneth into honestee, 
To telle yow a tale, or two, or three.' 

The tales he offers are a life of Edward the Confessor, 
or a series of ' tragedies,' of which he has a hundred at 
home in his cell. Condescendingly he explains to the 
unlearned that — 

Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie, 
As olde bokes maken us memorie, 
Of him that stood iu greet prosperitee 
And is yfallen out of heigh degree 
Into miserie, and endeth wrecchedly. 

With true scholarly spirit he apologizes for the lack of 
chronological order in what is to follow ; with a self- 
depreciation worthy of Matthew Arnold he begs to be 
excused for his ignorance ; and then, without waiting 
to see whether the choice is going to be acceptable, 
launches into his weary string of ' tragedies.' 

One day, as the sprightly author of the Decameron 
was sitting in his study, he was visited by a strange 

monk, who told him of a death-bed vision, in „ 

Soiurces. 

which a fellow monk had seen heaven and 
hell opened before him, and had clearly distinguished 
Giovanni Boccaccio among those dwelling in the less de- 
sirable of these mansions. The impressionable, imagi- 
native nature of Boccaccio was so deeply moved by this 
gruesome prophecy that he was at first determined to 
burn his books, and devote himself to a life of religion ; 
but under the saner counsels of his friend Petrarch, 
he decided instead to abandon his more frivolous com- 
positions, and give himself to the study of classical 
philology. Among the works which followed on this so- 
called conversion is one entitled De Casibus Virorum 



206 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

etFeminarum lllustrium^ a sort of biographical diction- 
ary, dealing with the lives of those who had stood in 
great prosperity and had fallen from their high degree 
into misery, and had come to a wretched end. Not a 
very pleasant subject for a book, we are tempted to say ; 
but the subject was one which appealed to an age 
intensely interested in biography, and eagerly craving 
the excitement of tragic downfalls. During the period 
when Chaucer was strongly under the influence of Boc- 
caccio and other Italian models, — the exact year we 
cannot determine, — he seems to have planned a similar 
work in his own English, which was to have consisted 
of a hundred ' tragedies,' beginning with Lucifer and 
Adam and extending down to his own day — such a 
work as his disciple Lydgate accomplished in his Fall 
of Princes^ a generation later. Fortunately, we think, 
this work was one of the many which Chaucer planned 
and started, but never brought to completion. He 
either tired of it, or perhaps came soon to recognize 
that the work was not worth doing. That he was con- 
scious of its literary badness at the time he wrote the 
Canterbury Tales is shown by the criticisms showered 
upon it by such diverse characters as the Knight and 
the Host. He had, however, written some dozen or 
thirteen of the hundred tragedies, taking up his subjects 
not chronologically, but according to his whim and 
fancy ; and when he came to construct the Canterhury 
Tales^ he saw a chance to utilize these discarded frag- 
ments, dramatically so appropriate to the ponderous dig- 
nity of the Monk, while at the same time indicating his 
maturer critical judgment as to their literary worth. 
He added four new paragraphs dealing with contem- 
porary worthies,^ purposely upset the chronological 

1 See Skeat's argTiment to prove that the tragedies of Pedro of Spain, 
Pedro of Cyprus, Barnabo, and Ugolino are of later date, in the Oxford 



THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 207 

order to conceal the incompleteness of the series and 
to give greater naturalness to the Monk's narration, 
and foisted the whole oif upon the substantial shoul- 
ders of the defenseless Monk. Here is a thrifty way 
of disposing of one's literary bastards ! In composing 
the several sections, Chaucer had recourse not only to 
his great model, Boccaccio,' but to the Vulgate Bible, 
to Ovid, Boethius, Guido,"anll others, the tale of Ugo- 
lino being taken bodily from the thirty-third canto of 
Dante's Inferno. 

A discussion of the literary merit of these ' tragedies ' 
must resemble the famous chapter on the snakes of 
Ireland. With few exceptions, they have no 
literary merit. Apart from the unspeakable teen Tra- 
monotony of the series, the dry epitomizing ^^ '^^' 
character of the individual narrations and the inevit- 
ably recurring moral make them intolerable. The one 
shining exception to this sweeping condemnation is the 
tale of Ugolino, a splendid bit of condensed narrative, 
rich in pathos and true tragic power ; but the excel- 
lence of this piece is due to the success with which the 
author has reproduced the matchless art of Dante. 

Before leaving the tale, one may pause a minute 
to notice the eight-line stanza in which it is written, 
a measure which Chaucer had used in his very early 
A. B. C This stanza, when supplemented by an ad- 
ditional alexandrine, gives us the Spenserian stanza of 
the Faerie Queene. 

THE nun's priest's TALE 

Not only the Knight who interrupts courteously 
and the Host who seconds his objection more roughly, 

Chaucer, vol. iii. pp. 428-429. The account of Barnabo deals with events 
■which happened in 1385, which is the latest historical allusion con- 
tained iu the Canterbury Tales. 



208 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

but the whole company must have been bored to death 
by the weary string of di£jjial__L±i:agedieaJ._wliich 
the,3^©»fe--Jia&_l]iQiight_fit to narrate on this sunny 
eighteeftth _Q£-April. The Knight objects that most 
people care for but ' litel hevinesse ; ' it is pleasanter 
to hear of men who from poor estate have attained to 
great and lasting prosperity. The Host assures the 
reverend gentleman that such talk as his is not worth 
a butterfly : — 

' For sikerly, nere clinking of your belles, 
That on your brydel hange on every syde, 
By heven king, that for us alle dyde, 
I sholde er this ban fallen doun for slepe, 
Although the slough had never been so depe.' 

We poor readers, who can hear this merry clinking 
of the bridle bells but faintly with the inner ear of 
imagination, are surely to be forgiven if we * fallen 
doun for slepe ' before the ' tragedies ' are half recounted. 
However, we have, by way of compensation, a relief 
which was not possible to the pilgrims — the blessed 
relief of skij)ping ; boldly turn three pages at once, and 
we reach one of the merriest tales that ever gi-aced 
our English tongue. 

Neither_in the General Prologue nor in the links 
which fit the tale into its framework has Chaucer taken 
giny pains to characterize the 'gentil Freest' who tells 
t^s tale. So we may dismiss him without ceremony, 
and imagine ourselves face to face with Chaucer ; his 
is the all-pervading geniality and sly elvish humor of 
this sparkling tale, which seems part and parcel of 
the April sunshine. There is no piece of all Chaucer's 
writings that one would sooner choose to set before 
the uninitiated and say, ' Here is the Chaucer whom 
we love.' Dull must he be of soul who fails to become 
a convert. Here is the vivid delineation of scene, the 



THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 209 

subtle characterization, the infinite ease and grace of 
language and verse, the delicate play of humor, above 
all the fresh-hearted gayety and eminent sanity to 
which we gladly turn when wearied out with the more 
modern poets and story-tellers who insistently brood 
over the mystery of this unintelligible world, as the pil- 
grims turned from the weary ' tragedies ' of the Monk. 
Let no one suppose that our present-day fad for ani- 
mal stories, wherein only too often an entirely respec- 
table dumb beast is endowed with a degree 
of wishy-washy sentimentalisra which even a 
moderately intelligent human being would be ashamed 
of, is at all a modern discovery. Far in the ' dark 
backward and abysm of time,' long centuries before the 
authors of the Jungle Books or the Brer Fox stories 
were dreamed of, our remote ancestors delighted in 
stories of beasts and birds who spoke and acted more 
or less like men and women, though keeping in the 
main the frolic wantonness and shrewd cunning of the 
beast. In those old days, I suppose, people were inter- 
ested in animals as the daily companions of the field, 
and even of the hearth ; to-day, in the crowded life of 
our cities, we are interested in beasts because we see 
so little of them. An honest, well-meaning clergyman 
spends a summer vacation in the country, and armed 
with opera-glass, note-book, and abundant sentiment, 
' discovers ' in the life of the forest a far-seeing wisdom, 
a pathos, a tragedy, with which he fills his books — or 
lecture-halls — for a year to come. From this so-called 
' nature study ' the step to the sentimental animal story 
is inevitable. I do not mean that all our animal stories 
are so written ; I could name at least three writers of 
such tales who escape, or nearly escape, the charge 
of false sentimentality ; it is the great army of their 
imitators — but enough of this. 



210 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Any one who will venture into the labyrinthine dis- 
cussions of the folklorists will find abundant proof 
that stories not unlike the central episode of the cock 
and fox in Chaucer's tale have been told since the ear- 
liest times in all countries of the world, from darkest 
Africa to farthest Inde. Tales of the fireside soon find 
their way into literature, when literature has once ap- 
peared, and so it was with these popular stories of the 
beast and bird. There have been in the past two main 
forms of the animal story : the ^sopian fable, written 
by a moralizer who sought to give new effectiveness to a 
familiar bit of practical wisdom ; and the animal epic, 
the great representative of which is Reynard the Fox^ 
written, in its later form at least, by a satirist who 
wished to make fun of men and women under the con- 
venient guise of animals, at whom any one may laugh 
without fear of the censor. Of these two literary forms, 
that of the fable is the simpler and apparently the 
earlier. I need not characterize it; every one knows 
his ^sop ; but it is interesting to see how the germ 
of Chaucer's tale appears in fable setting. Here is a 
translation of a Latin fable from the early Middle 
Ages, one of a collection which goes under the name 
of Romulus : * — 

A Cock was walking up and down on the dunghill, 
when a Fox, seeing him, came near, and sitting down 
before him, broke in with these words : ' I never saw 
a fowl equal to you in good looks, nor one who deserved 
more praise for the sweetness of his voice, save only 
your father. He, when he wanted to sing louder than 
usual, used to shut his eyes.' The Cock, who was a 
great lover of praise, did as the Fox suggested ; he 

^ A verse translation of Marie de France's later but more artistic 
version of this fable ia given by Professor Skeat in the Oxford Chaucer^ 
vol. iii, p. 432. 



THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 211 

shut his eyes, and began to sing with a loud voice. 
Immediately the Fox made a rush at him, and turned 
his song- into sadness by hurrying off to the woods 
with the singer. There happened to be shepherds in 
the field, and they began to chase the Fox with dogs 
and with great outcry. Then the Cock said to the Fox : 
' Tell them that I belong to you, and that this robbery 
is none of their business.' But when the Fox began to 
speak, the Cock dropped from his mouth, and by the 
aid of his wings soon found refuge in the top of a tree. 
Then the Fox said, 'Woe to him who speaks when 
he had better be silent.' And the Cock answered him 
from the tree, ' Woe to him who closes his eyes when 
he had better keep them open.' ^ 

French and German scholars have not yet finished 
fighting out the question to which nationality belongs 
the honor of originating the great animal epic of the 
Middle Ages, in which King Noble the lion, Bruin the 
bear, Grimbald the wolf, and the other animals hold 
their parliaments, and issue their decrees for the sup- 
pression of Reynard the fox, hero of this ' vulpiad,' who 
manages by his cleverness to outwit them all. The epic 
of Reynard, as we have it in French and German, and 
in the other tongues into which it was translated,^ is 
not the work of any single author or single age. Like 
the great cathedral buildings of England, the original 
fabric was freely added to and elaborated, any animal 
fable tending to get itself incorporated into this most 
popular of poems. The story of the cock and the fox 
is found both in the French Roman de Renart and in 
the German Reineche FucJis ; but neither can have 
been Chaucer's immediate source. Miss Kate Petersen, 

^ I have followed the Latin text given by Miss Petersen : On the 
Sources of the Nonne Prestes Tale, Boston, 1898, pp. 3-6. 

^ The first English trauslatiou was made by Caxton in 1481. 



212 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

who has examined the matter most carefully, concludes 
that Chaucer follows a version of the epic now lost to 
us, which was nearer to the German Iteinecke than to 
the French Menart. By comparing Chaucer's version 
with these two, and making allowances for what may 
have been Chaucer's independent changes and addi- 
tions, she ingeniously reconstructs what must have been 
the main details of the version Chaucer used. This 
reconstructed version I shall reproduce here as a basis 
for comparison with the Niiii's Priesfs Tale} 

Beside a grove dwells a woman somewhat advanced 
in years, content with her property and with her pro- 
vision of grain and bacon. Within her yard, protected 
by fence and hedge, she keeps a cock named Chante- 
cler and a number of hens, the best of which is named 
Pinte. One day at sunrise the fox, full of tricks, comes 
after Chantecler, but finds the fence too strong for 
him. At last, however, he pulls out a slat with his 
teeth, and crawls through the hedge into a heap of 
cabbages, where he lies hidden. Pinte perceives his 
presence, and calling out to Chantecler, who is asleep, 
she and her companions fly up on a beam. Chantecler 
comes up proudly, assures the hens that they are quite 
safe in this yard, and bids them return to their former 
place. He then tells Pinte that he has had a bad dream 
in which he saw a reddish beast ; is it any wonder that 
he is distressed and full of apprehension ? May heaven 
interpret the dream aright ! Here, perhaps, Pinte offers 
some interpretation of the dream. Chantecler makes a 
reply in which he scoffs at dreams and makes humorous 

1 On the Sources of the Nonne Prestes Tale, Radcliffe College Mono- 
graphs, No. 10, Boston, 1898. (In reproducing her hypothetical ver- 
sion of the tale, I take some liberties with her language.) This study 
supersedes the discussion of sources given in Originals and Analogues, 
pp. 111-128, though the French texts there given are useful for con- 
sultation. 



THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 213 

remarks about women. Summoning up his courage, he 
defies the dream. 

A little before noon, Chantecler, unaware of the fox, 
flies nearer to the place where he is lurking, and on 
first seeing him, starts to flee. But the fox begs Chan- 
tecler not to flee from a friend. Have not their families 
always been on friendly terms ? He praises the singing 
of Chantecler's father, who used to sing with closed 
eyes. Why should not Chantecler try to imitate him ? 
Chantecler, too rash to perceive his folly, begins to beat 
his wings, and to sing with closed eyes. Upon this the 
fox seizes him by the throat and runs for the wood, 
while Pinte and the other hens lament their loss. 
The woman comes at the cry of the hens, and seeing 
the fox with Chantecler in his mouth cries, ' Harrow ! ' 
Every one pursues the fox. The dog is let loose. But 
Chantecler, in all his peril, prompts the fox to utter 
words of defiance to his pursuers. The fox opens his 
mouth, whereupon the cock escapes and flies into a 
tree. The cock assures the fox that the adventure shall 
not be repeated. The fox invokes shame upon the 
mouth that speaks out of season ; and Chantecler says, 
' Misfortune come upon him who shuts his eyes at 
the wrong time.' 

Though the point of this tale is the same as that of 
the Latin fable, we find the characters supplied with 
definite habitation and with names, while the story is 
elaborated by the introduction of a new episode, that 
of the premonitory dream, and by some attempt at char- 
acterization. Chaucer, in utilizing this story, has made 
some changes in detail — the appearance of the fox is 
deferred until later in the story, when his part in the 
action is to be important, distinctly improving the 
structure of the narrative ; he has greatly elaborated 
the discussion of the dream, giving the skeptical atti- 



214 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

tude to Pertelote rather than Chanticleer ; and he has 
immensely heightened the description and characteriza- 
tion. In this way, what was originally a fireside story 
has become first a literary fable, then a developed nar- 
rative, and lastly a work of art. 
.^.^^nJhaucer's first care in retelling the old story was to 
'' give heightened color and realism to his background. 
Chaucer's He goes out into the country and paints a 
Version. peasant's cottage, such as must have been 
matter of common experience to the readers of his own 
day — the simple house of two rooms, with its sooty 
' hall ' serving as kitchen, living-room, hen-house, barn, 
and pig-sty, and the smaller ' bower ' where slept the 
widow and her daughters. We are given a view of the 
every-day peasant life, its hard work and meagre fare, 
its narrowing interests ; all this serving as a sharp con- 
trast to the lordly elegance and wide intellectual scope 
of Chanticleer. Still, it is not an unhappy life that 
Chaucer shows ; if the widow's board is but plainly 
furnished forth, she has as recompense a good diges- 
tion : — 

The goute lette hir nothing for to daunce, 

N' apoplexye shente nat hir heed. 

Best of all, she has that ' hertes suffisaunce ' which 
makes any life worth the living. Once again, later in 
the tale, the peasant life reasserts itself, when the 
widow, her daughters, the neighbors, and all the ani- 
mals of the farm in wild bedlam join in the hue and 
cry after the marauding fox. Both these pictures have 
all the vividness and realism of a Dutch genre paint- 
ing by Teniers or Gerard Dou. 

A greater achievement than this is the creation of 
Chanticleer, a character which is real and interesting, 
while remaining still a rooster, at the same time human 
and galline. To accomplish this, Chaucer has seized 



THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 215 

on the trait of character which is in a rooster most 
human and in a man most galline, the quality which 
the two species share in common — egotism, personal 
vanity, in a word, the strut. This is the quality which 
mankind agrees in attributing to the rooster as a type ; 
doubtless a rooster poet would attribute the same qual- 
ity to man. This is the trait of character which in the 
old fable leads to Chanticleer's downfall, when the fox 
cozens him with his pretty obvious flattery ; this is pre- 
eminently the quality of the domestic tyrant. So that 
it is without any sense of incongruity that we see the 
two types coalesce. 

Chanticleer, as he is first described to us, is only a 
superlative rooster, superlative in his crowing, superla- 
tive in his galline beauty : — 

In al the land of crowing nas his peer. 

His vois was merier than the mery orgon 

On messe-dayes that in the chirche gon; 

Wei sikerer was his crowing in his logge, 

Than is a clokke, or an abbey orlogge. 

By nature knew he ech ascencioun 

Of equinoxial in thilke toun; 

For whan degrees fif tene were ascended, 

Thanne crew he, that it mighte nat ben amended. 

From this it is an easy step to the singing of a song 
with words : — 

But such a joye was it to here hem singe, 
Whan that the brighte sonne gan to springe. 
In swete accord, 'my lief is faren in londe.' 

This is followed up by an offhand statement : — 

For thilke tyme, as I have understonde, 
Bestes and briddes coude speke and singe. 

We accept this statement readily enough, as a neces- 
sary condition of animal stories. But if animals can 
talk, they can also have dreams. So bit by bit we are 
led into the plausible impossibility of the conjugal 



216 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

dispute, with all its display of erudition and dialec- 
tics. 

Dame Partlet becomes tlie typical housewife, kindly 
solicitous of her husband's welfare, even though she 
reproach him for his faint heart, — 

* Have ye no mauues herte, and hau a berd ? ' 

unwilling of course to accept his explanation of the 
dream, confident in the superiority of her own wisdom 
and in the efficacy of her own homely remedies. Was 
there ever a wife who did not love to prescribe from 
her medicine chest, or ever a husband who did not pro- 
test that medicine was quite unnecessary "? She is even 
ready to humor her husband's weakness for pedantry, 
quotes to him from one of his own authors, enters at 
length into a scientific explanation of dreams. She has 
not lived with the learned Chanticleer for nothing. As 
for the cock, he is your typical pedant and egotist. He 
is proud of his voice, of his learning, and of his immense 
superiority to his wives, whose company he enjoys be- 
cause of his superiority. With what evident self-satis- 
faction he quotes an uncomplimentary Latin proverb, 
which he translates wrongly, deliciously conscious that 
his playful fraud cannot be detected : ■-»- 

' For also siker as In principio, 
Mulier est hommis confusio; ' 
Madame, the sentence of this Latin is — 
Womman is mannes joye and al his blis.' 

His wife ventures to quote the authority of Cato 
that dreams are not to be regarded. Very well, if she 
wants authorities, she shall have them ; and he proceeds 
to bury her volumes deep under his accumulated lore. 
She ought to know that a woman can't argue. But if 

^ The phrase ' In principio ' begins the book of Genesis and the Gos- 
pel of St. John, in the Vulgate. ' It is as true as the Bible that woman 
is man's confusion.' 



THE NUN'S PRIEST'S TALE 217 

Chanticleer is pedant and egotist, he is nevertheless a 
kindly soul, and we cannot but like him. 

However learnedly Chanticleer may discourse, how- 
ever human he may seem in his petty domestic tyran- 
nies, Chaucer never suffers us quite to forget that he 
is but a rooster and that Dame Partlet is but a hen. 
Were we to forget, the delicious humor of the situ- 
ation would be lost. This end Chaucer attains by con- 
stantly recurring to distinctly galline traits. After 
displaying her complete acquaintance with the materia 
mecllca, and assuring her husband that the herbs neces- 
sary 

' To purgen yow binethe, and eek above ' 

are growing right there in the yard, she bids him 

' Pekke hem up right as they growe, and ete hem in.' 

So, too, when the long debate is ended, the rooster 
nature reasserts itself : — 

And with that word he fley doun fro the beem, 
For it was day, and eek his hennes alle ; 
And with a chuk he gan hem for to calle, 
For he had founde a corn, lay in the yerd. 
Koyal he was, he was namore aferd. 

He loketh as it were a grim leoun; 
And on his toos he rometh up and doun, 
Him deyned not to sette his foot to grounde. 

The beautiful bubble of pride and lordliness is 
pricked to nothing by the clever stratagem of Daun 
Russel the fox, and his ignominious rape of Chanti- 
cleer. That the airy fabric of the tale may not fall too 
suddenly to ground, Chaucer has recourse to the mock 
heroic. The marauding fox is apostrophized as 

O news Scariot, newe Genilon! 

False dissimilour, O Greek Sinon, 

That broghtest Troye al outrely to sorwe! 



218 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

There is learned discussion o£ free-will and God's fore- 
knowledge, as one might debate the reason of a prince's 
fall. The outcry of the widowed hens is compared 
to the lamentations of the Trojan ladies when Ilion 
was won, to the shrieks of ' Hasdrubales wyf,' to the 
wailing of the senators' wives when Nero burned impe- 
rial Rome. It takes all the wild hubbub of shouting 
rustics, barking dogs, and quacking geese to bring 
us back again to the realization that all this mighty 
action has been transacted in a poor widow's barnyard, 
and that its protagonists are but a cock and a fox. 

The rest of the story, which now follows the lines 
of the old fable, is disposed of quickly ; the moral is 
pointed, and thus is ended Chaucer's tale of Chanti- 
cleer. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUPS C AND D 

THE physician's TALE 

The Physician's Tale begins a new group of tales, 
and Chaucer has provided it with no prologue by way 
of introduction. The portrait of this doctor of physic 
given in the General Prologue is allowed to stand as 
our sole information about the character which, judged 
from a modern standpoint, has in it more of the quack 
than of the reputable practitioner. Neither is the tale 
which Chaucer assigns to the man of medicine partic- 
ularly appropriate to him. One cannot refrain a smile 
at Ten Brink's ingenious suggestion that its ' desperate, 
bloody ending ' is ' appropriate to the character of the 
Doctor and his professional acquaintance with violent 
remedies.' One may notice, too, that Virginia's allusion 
to the daughter of Jephthah gives the lie to the state- 
ment of the General Prologue that 

His studie was but litel on the bible. 

Chaucer had apparently written the story with another 
purpose in view, perhaps with the intention of incor- 
porating it into the Legend of Good Women, and 
finding it in his desk drawer, determined, with his 
accustomed literary thrift, to turn it to account in the 
Canterbury Tales. If not particularly appropriate, it 
is not markedly inappropriate. Possibly the digression 
on the proper bringing up of daughters may have been 
inserted as suitable to the Doctor in his capacity of 
family adviser. 



220 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

One who was not familiar with Chaucer's literary 
methods would immediately assume from the explicit 
statement of the first line that the source of 
the tale was Titus Livius. Livy's history is, 
of course, the ultimate source ; but the most hasty read- 
ing of the Latin story will show a wide divergence. In 
Livy, Virginius, on hearing the unjust sentence, imme- 
diately snatches up a knife, and without any pause 
buries it in his daughter's breast. This is more natural 
and less revolting than the deliberate deed of Chaucer's 
Virginius. The rather barbarous episode of the head 
sent to Appius on a charger is also absent from Livy's 
narrative. Chaucer did not make these changes him- 
self ; for in dealing with themes from antique history 
he is usually chary of alteration. The tale explicitly 
says : — 

This is no fable, 
But knowen for liistorial thing notable, 
The sentence of it sooth is, out of doute. 

Moreover, though the change makes possible the affect- 
ing dialogue between Virginia and her father, which is 
the emotional climax of the tale, it involves, as we have 
seen, a certain untruth to nature as compared with 
Livy's treatment. The truth is that Chaucer did not 
go to Livy at all. Indeed, we have no proof that Livy 
was any more than a name to him. The outline of the 
story, and the ascription of it to Livy, are taken directly 
from that great storehouse of story, the Roman de la 
Rose. Jean de Menu's narrative is not long, and since 
a comparison of it with Chaucer's tale serves well to 
show the latter's literary methods, I shall translate the 
passage entire.* 

^ The story occupies lines 5613-5682 of Moon's edition of the lioman 
de la Rose. Skeat has reprinted the passage in the Oxford Chaucer, 
vol. 3. pp. 435-437. I have made my translation from his text. 



THE PHYSICIAN'S TALE 221 

Did not Appius well deserve to hang, who made his 
servant undertake, by means of false witnesses, a false 
quarrel against the maiden Virginia, who was daugh- 
ter to Virginius, as saith Titus Livius, who knows well 
how to relate the case ? This he did because he could 
not have mastery over the maiden, who cared not for 
him, nor for his lust. The false churl said in audience: 
' Sir judge, give sentence for me, for the maid is mine ; 
I will prove her for my slave against all men living : for 
soon after she was born, she was taken from my house 
and given in keeping to Virginius, where she has been 
brought up. Therefore I demand of you. Sir Appius, 
that you deliver me my slave, for it is right that she 
serve me, and not him who has brought her up ; and if 
Virginius denies this, I am all ready to prove it, for 
I can find good witnesses of the fact.' Thus spake 
the false traitor, who was a retainer of the false judge ; 
and when the plea had gone thus far, before Virgin- 
ius, who was all ready to reply and confound his adver- 
saries, had spoken, Appius gave hasty judgment that 
without delay the maiden should be returned to the 
churl. And when the good gentleman before named, 
good knight and well-renowned, that is to say, Vir- 
ginius, heard this thing, and saw well that he could 
not defend his daughter against Appius, but that he 
would be forced to give her up and deliver her body 
over to shame, he chose injury rather than shame, by a 
wonderful determination, if Titus Livius lies not. For 
in love, and without malice, he straightway cut off the 
head of his beautiful daughter Virginia and presented 
it to the judge before all men in full consistory ; and the 
judge, as the story says, straightway gave order that 
he be taken and led away to be slain or hanged. But 
he neither slew him nor hanged him, for the people 
defended him, being moved to great pity as soon as the 



222 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

deed was known ; then, for this evil deed, Appius was 
put in prison, and there quickly slew himself before 
the day of his trial ; and Claudius, who had challenged 
the maiden, was sentenced to death as a malefactor ; but 
Virginius, taking pity on him, won a reprieve for him, 
making suit to the people that he should be sent into 
exile, and all were condemned and put to death who 
were witnesses in the case. 

What Chaucer has done is to reproduce this narrative 
with substantial fidelity, heightening its effectiveness 
Chaucer's somewhat by a freer use of direct discourse, 
Version. while adding of his own fantasy two long 
original passages, which serve to change entirely the 
artistic emphasis of the tale. These passages are the 
charming description of Virginia's maidenly loveliness, 
with the digression on the bringing up of daughters, 
and the infinitely pathetic scene in which Virginia 
learns her father's purpose, and herself chooses death 
rather than shame. Beside the wonderful effectiveness 
of these two passages, the narrative portions sink into 
insignificance, or rather serve as a mere framework 
for the picture of Virginia's spotless purity. In the 
French it is the unjust judge and his righteous pun- 
ishment that receive chief emphasis ; with Chaucer, the 
personality of Virginia dominates the whole. The nar- 
rative is not slighted ; it is merely subordinated ; and 
the memory of the reader lingers fondly on the maid 
who 

Floured in virginitee 
With alle humilitee and abstinence. 

THE pardoner's TALE 

The Host has been so wrought upon by the pathos 
of the Physician's tale of Virginia, that he feels it abso- 
lutely essential to his physical well-being that he hear a 



THE PARDONER'S TALE 223 

* mery tale.' With a delicate touch of satire, the author 
makes him turn to the Pardoner as one most likely to 
satisfy this need. The Pardoner is ready enough with 
his assent; but the company has reached a wayside 
tavern, whose 'ale-stake,' crowned with its garland, 
projects far over the muddy road, and the physical 
well-being of the Pardoner demands that he stop long 
enough to drink a draught of corny ale and eat a cake. 
The ' gentles ' of the company, however, know only too 
well what to expect when a pardoner undertakes to tell 
a ' mery tale.' ' Let him tell us no ribaldry,' they cry. 

' Tel us som moral thing, that we may lere 
Som wit, and thanue wol we gladly here.' 

Ready complaisance is part of the Pardoner's stock in 
trade. 

* I graunte, ywis,' quod he, ' but I mot thinke 
Upon som honest thing, whyl that I drinke.' 

Things honest and of good report proceed from a par- 
doner's lijjs only as the result of meditation. 

The Pardoner is, of course, a dreadful hypocrite ; but 
his hypocrisy is a part of his profession merely, and he 
is now on a vacation. He is an honest hypocrite, at least 
in so far as he does not deceive himself, nor try to pass 
himself for a holy man 'among friends.' As he sits 
and quaffs his corny ale and surveys his fellow voy- 
agers, his tongue is loosened, and in a spirit partly of 
bravado, but more, I think, with an artist's natural 
pride in his art, he begins to give away some of the 
secrets of his trade. ' Here, in this company, you see, I 
am a very unassuming, good-natured fellow ; but when 
I preach in church, I take pains to assume a haughty 
manner of speech, and put in a word of Latin here 
and there " to saffron with my predicacioun." I show 
my relics — they are really only rags and bones — I 



224 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

preach always on the sin of avai'ice, so that my hear- 
ers may give the larger offering. In this way I win a 
hmidred marks ^ a year.' 

y^The Pardoner's reason for giving this frank account 
of his own hypocrisies I take to have been something 
like this. ' I am not really a moral man,' he implies, 
' and I do not intend to take the trouble of keeping up 
appearances on this journey ; but it is my business to 
give moral discourses, and since you insist on having 
a moral tale, I will give you an example of my pulpit 
oratory.' 

' For, though myself be a ful vicious man, 
A moral tale yet I yow telle can. 
Which I am wont to preche, for to winne. 
Now holde your pees, my tale I wol beginne.' 

The sermon which follows on this preamble consists 
of a highly dramatic story, which is interrupted after 
a few lines by a long discussion on the sins of swear- 
ing, gluttony, dicing, and other of the deadly sins, and 
only continued after an interval of some hundred and 
sixty lines. This discussion contains several touches of 
humor ; but our main attention must be occupied with 
the story itself. 

The immediate source of the Pardoner's Tale, which 
may have been some fabliau now lost, is not known to 
us ; but the story in its main features is one 
of great antiquity and wide dissemination. 
The earliest form of the tale which has been discovered 
is in an old Hindoo collection of tales, and bears the title 
Vedahhha Jdtaha. Other versions are found in Persian, 
Arabic, Kashmiri, and Tibetan. From the Orient the 
tale was brought to Europe, where versions are found 
in Italian, German, French, Portuguese, and Latin.^ 

^ Equivalent to at least seven hundred pounds of modern money. 
^ See Originals and Analogues of Some of Chaucer^s Canterbury Tales, 
pp. 129-134, 415-436. 



THE PARDONER'S TALE 225 

The latest appearance of the story is found in the tale of 
The King's Ankus, in Kipling's Second Jungle Book. 
The version which bears closest resemblance to Chau- 
cer's is found in the 1572 edition of the Cento Novelle 
Antiehe, a collection of tales which probably antedates 
Boccaccio. This tale is in itself so well told, and fur- 
nishes so interesting a comparison with Chaucer, that 
I shall translate it entire. 

Here is the story of a hermit^ who as he was walk- 
ing through a forest, found very great treasure. 

Walking one day through a forest, a Hermit found a 
large cave which was well concealed, and betaking him- 
self thither — for he was very weary — as he reached the 
cave, he beheld in a certain place a great gleaming ; 
for there was much gold there. Now as soon as he saw 
what it was, incontinently he went away, and began to 
run through the desert as fast as he could go. As he 
was running thus, the Hermit came upon three great 
robbers, who had taken their stand in this forest to rob 
whosoever should pass there. But never as yet had they 
learned that this gold was there. Now as they stood 
concealed, and saw this man fleeing so, who had no 
one behind to pursue him, they were at first somewhat 
afeard ; but, notwithstanding, they accosted him to 
know why he fled, for of this they marveled greatly. 
He answered and said : ' My brothers, I flee death, 
who comes after me, pursuing me.' They, seeing neither 
man nor beast that pursued him, said : ' Show us who 
pursues thee, and lead us where this death is.' Then 
the Plermit said to them, ' Come with me, and I will 
show you him ; ' but he begged them in every way that 
they should not seek death, forasmuch as he for his 
part was fleeing him. And they, wishing to find death, 
to see after what fashion he was made, asked him 
nothina: else. The Hermit seeins; that he could not do 



226 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

otherwise, and being in fear, conducted them to the cave 
whence he had departed, and said to them, ' Here is 
death which pursued me,' and showed them the gold 
that was there ; and incontinently they knew what it 
was, and they began to be exceeding joyful, and to make 
great solace together. Then they dismissed this good 
man, and he went away about his own business ; and 
they began to say to one another how he was a great 
simpleton. Remained all these three robbers together, 
to guard this treasure, and began to reason what they 
should do. One of them answered and said : ' It seems 
to me that since God has given us this high good for- 
tune, we should not depart hence, until we carry away 
all this treasure.' And the other said : ' Let us not do 
so ; let one of us take somewhat of it, and go to the 
city and sell it, and get bread and wine and whatsoever 
else we need, and on this errand let him use the best wit 
he has : let him so do, that he may furnish us forth.' 
To this agreed they all three together. Now the Devil, 
who is full of devices, and in his wickedness ordains 
as much evil as he can, put into the heart of him who 
went to the city for provisions, ' As soon as I am in the 
city (said he to himself), I will eat and drink as much 
as I need, and then provide myself with certain things 
for which I have use now at the present time ; and then 
I will poison what I carry to my companions : so that 
when they shall both be dead, I shall be lord of all that 
treasure, and, as it seems to me, it is so great, that I 
shall be the richest man of all this country as regards 
my having ; ' and as it came to him in thought, so he 
did. He took meat for himself, as much as he needed, 
and then all the rest he poisoned, and so carried it to 
those his companions. 

While he was going to the city, according as we have 
said, if he considered and devised evil to slay his com- 



THE PARDONER'S TALE 227 

panlons, to the end that all might remain to him, they 
on their part thought no better of him than he of them, 
and they said to one another : 'As soon as this comrade 
of ours shall return with bread and wine and with the 
other things which we need, we will slay him, and then 
we will eat what we want, and then all this great trea- 
sure will be between us two. And as we shall be fewer 
that share it, so much greater part will each of us have.' 
Now comes he who was gone to the city to buy the things 
of which they had need. When he was returned to his 
companions, straightway when they saw him, they were 
upon him with lances and with knives, and slew him. 
As soon as they had him dead, they ate of what he had 
brought ; and as soon as they were filled, both fell down 
dead. And thus they died all three ; for the one slew 
the other as you have heard, and had not the treasure. 
And so our Lord God pays traitors ; for they went to 
seek death, and in this manner they found it, and in 
such way as they were worthy of. And the wise man 
wisely fled from it, and the gold remained without a 
master as at first. 

It is easy to see why this tale should have been a 
popular one ; it is in its nature essentially tragic, the 
catastrophe coming as a direct result of evil charac- 
ter ; in the eagerness with which death is sought and 
the ease with which it is found, we have a perfect ex- 
ample of dramatic irony. 

/^he effectiveness of the Pardoner's Tale depends 
first on the effectiveness of its theme, as shown in the 
Italian novella^ and in hardly less measure on 
the setting which Chaucer has given to it. In doner's 
the background of the story looms that most 
terrible and mysterious force, the plague, death raised 
to its highest power. In our Western world of sanitary 
science, widespread pestilence has ceased to be a matter 



228 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

of national experience. To realize what it means, we 
must read in our newspapers of its ravages in India or 
China, or better still, read the accounts of Thucydides 
or Boccaccio or DeFoe. But to Chaucer and his readers 
the plague was a matter of personal experience. Four 
times during the reign of Edward III, in 1348-49, 1361- 
63, 1369, and 1375-76, England was swept by pesti- 
lence. In the first of these plagues, the same which 
Boccaccio describes in the Introduction of the Decam- 
eron^ we are told that half the population of England 
perished. 

A highly interesting feature of Boccaccio's descrip- 
tion of the plague is the account he gives of its vary- 
ing effect on the moral tone of Florentine society. Some 
gave themselves up to religious exercise ; others shut 
themselves up in their houses, ate the most nourishing 
food, and kept their minds occupied with pleasant top- 
ics ; but many, in the conviction that to-morrow they 
should die, spent to-day in eating, drinking, and making 
merry. It is to this last class that the three ' riotours ' 
of the Pardoner's Tale belong. In the Flemish town 
where the scene of the story is laid, a thousand victims 
have already fallen ; but unchastened by the calamity, 
the three ' riotours ' sit in drunken revelry at their 
tavern, though it is not yet nine of the day. Amid their 
laughter and oaths comes the solemn clink of the fu- 
neral bell. It is the corpse of one of their own friends, 
suddenly stricken as he sat drunk upon his bench. 
Though moved to no amendment of life, they are not 
sufficiently callous to continue their merry-making. In 
drunken rage they vow to seek out this false traitor 
Death and be revenged. The taverner has mentioned 
a great village a mile or more away, where not a 
human soul is left alive. Surely here victorious Death 
must keep his abode. The background darkens, as the 



THE PARDONER'S TALE 229 

three ' riotours,' after taking that ill-kept oath of 
mutual faith, with swords drawn and their mouths 
full of curses, rush madly towards the city of Death. 
AVe feel already that doom hangs over them. They are 
what a Scotchman calls 'fey,' marked out for death. 
All this, it will be noticed, is absent from the Italian 
novella. 

Chaucer now provides a contrast of overwhelming 
power. An old, poor man, ' al f orwrapped save his 
face,' meets them at a stile, which marks, perhaps, 
the confines of the village they are seeking. It is 
' crabbed age and youth,' drunken excitement and calm 
philosophic meditation. 

' Ne deeth, alias ! ne wol nat ban my lyf ; 
Thus walke I, lyk a restelees caityf, 
And on the ground, which is my modres gate, 
I knokke with my staf, bothe erly and late, 
And seye, " leva moder, leet me in ! 
Lo, bow I vanish, flesh, and blood, and skin ! 
Alias ! whan shul my bones been at reste ? 
Moder, with yow wolde I chaunge my cheste, 
That in my chambre longe tyme bath be. 
Ye ! for an heyre clout to wrappe me ! " 
But yet to me she wol nat do that grace. 
For which ful pale and welked is my face.' 

He, too, it seems, is a seeker after death. But who 
is he, this mysterious passenger ? Whence comes he ? 
whither goes he? Whose is the treasure that lies 
beneath the oak? and how came it there? To none 
of these questions does Chaucer so much as hint an 
answer. We feel that the old man is something other 
than the hermit of the Italian novella; the hermit 
was fleeing death, this man is seeking it. One of the 
' riotours ' accuses him of being Death's spy ; we are 
tempted to believe that he is rather very Death him- 
self. But Chaucer does not say so ; he wraps him in 



230 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

a mystery as deep as the mystery of death. The pale, 
withered face and heavily shrouded figure rise like 
a vapor, and fade as suddenly into thin air. Was he 
a reality or a vision? And the treasure, those eight 
bushels of gold florins, were they real and palpable, 
or only a dreadful mocking vision ? Reality or vision, 
they have in them the power of deadly work. 

The three doomed revelers run up the crooked way ; 
but instead of grim, antic Death, they find what seems 
to them the very fullness of life. Here is provision 
for endless days and nights of dissipation. They are 
struck into silence by the vision. The clink of funeral 
bell, the mad quest of Death, the mysterious figure, all 
are forgotten. The fumes of drunkenness clear away. 
They are at once practical. No questions are asked ; 
the money must be secured. Why care for Death ? 
Here is life, and life in more abundance. 

The cuts are drawn ; the messenger is dispatched ; 
the two plots are laid, and the poison is bought. A 
few brief strokes sketch in the triple murder. 

Thus ended been thise homicydes two, 
And eek the false empoysoner also. 

Three dead bodies and a heap of worthless gold ! They 
have found Death — the vanquisher. The strange old 
man totters on his way, tapping with his stick at the 
gates of our common grave, the earth, still seeking the 
death which these so readily have found. Will he ever 
find it ? or is he doomed to a withering Tithonus-like 
immortality, deathless as Death itself? 

This Is the tale of the' Pardoner, — full of tragic 
terror ; dramatic in its structure, transacted as it is 
almost wholly in dialogue ; never hurried, but marching 
forward with sure strides, unimpeded with a single 
superfluous detail, irresistible and inevitable as death 
and night. 



THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE 231 

As for the moral of it, one could draw morals enough 
if it were desirable. The miserable mountebank of 
a Pardoner sees in it only the exemplification of his 
favorite theme : Radix malorum est cupiditas. 

One reads of the preacher Whitefield that, in address- 
ing a seaman's mission in New York, he described a 
shipwreck with such vividness that a hardened old salt 
jumped to his feet and cried, 'Man the boats! she'll 
sink ! ' And again that in Philadelphia the utilitarian 
skeptic Ben Franklin emptied his purse into the preach- 
er's collection-box. With such a tale as this the Par- 
doner may well have passed off his spurious relics, and 
won the hundred marks a year which he boasts of as 
his income. The sublime audacity of the Pardoner, how- 
ever, is reserved till the end of the tale, when in the 
glow of his oratory he offers his worthless relics to the 
very company to whom he has made an ex'po&e of his 
lying methods. I hardly think he expected to win their 
silver ; as we have seen, he is on a vacation. It is rather 
the conscious artist in hypocrisy, who wishes to give a 
crowning example of his art. 

THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE 

The Wife of Bath's Prologue is a dramatic mon o- 
logue in which a highly characterized, but at the same 
time a typi<-'al, womau of the middle class is made to 
reveal her own p eisoaarlity^-Jiarrate theevents of^Jier 
rd proBrmtteft^ba i- opin ions on the topicjwliifih, 
i^.-t«-4reT^-tl4f*-Tiiuyi Ttteijafmir human life. At every 
step one is conscious of the newl^rft nences b rought into 
our literature by the Italian Renaissance. The intense 
interest in all sorts and conditions of men, without 
which our great dramatic literature could never have 
been ; the breaking down of class distinction, which 
makes a cloth-weaver ' of bisyde Bathe ' fit subject for 



232 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

a poet's verse, and gives to her thoughts and experi- 
ences a value as real as those of a countess or queen ; 
and lastly, the almost revolutionary daring with which 
the poet makes his creation demolish the cherished 
mediaeval ideal of celibacy, — all these proclaim the 
author of the Wife of BdtKs, Prologue as the first 
modern man of England, with the virtues and faults 
of our modern world. 

Though this composition is essentially one of Chau- 
cer's most original productions, here as elsewhere he is 
indebted to 'olde bokes.' The original con- 

Sources. 

ception of the Wife of Bath is due, appar- 
ently, to an allegorical personage in the Roman de la 
Rose named La Vieille, a personage who, though first 
introduced in the earlier part of the poem by Guil- 
laume de Lorris, is elaborated in Jean de Meun's satiri- 
cal continuation of the work. But though the points 
of similarity are numerous. La Vieille remains, as her 
name indicates, an abstraction, or at most a type ; while 
the Wife of Bath is a living, breathing woman. Other 
hints for the elaboration of the character Chaucer seems 
to have drawn from Jean de Meun's description of Le 
Jaloux, an old married man, who attributes to woman 
many of the qualities which the Wife of Bath eagerly 
claims for herself.^ For the long discussion of celibacy, 
however, Chaucer has gone directly to a work of St. 
Jerome, used also by the author of the Roman de la 
Rose, known as Hieronymus contra Jovinianum, in 
which the holy father demolishes with much acerbity 
the argument of one Jovinian, who had ventured to 
write against the practice of celibacy. In the course 
of this argument Jerome inserts a long extract from 
a lost work of a Greek named Theophrastus, entitled 

1 See W. E. Mead, ' The Prologue of the Wife of Bath's Tale,' Publi- 
cations of the Modern Language Association of America, 16. 388-404. 



THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE 233 

Liber Aureolus de Nuptiis. A further source is the 
Eiyhtola Valevii ad Rujinum de non Ducenda Uxore^ 
printed among the works of Jerome, though written 
much later. These three works, it will be observed, 
were all contained in the favorite volume of the Wife 
of Bath's fifth husband, the volume which the irate 
lady forces him to burn. The delicious humor of Chau- 
cer's procedure consists in suffering the serious argu- 
ments of a father of the church to be quoted and 
refuted by such a one as the Wife of Bath. Bitter 
attacks on the frailty of woman were a commonplace 
of the old monastic literature ; but Chaucer is engaged 
in no moral diatribe. Neither does he feel called upon 
to espouse the cause of woman vilified ; in the spirit 
of the dramatist he creates a woman who not only 
exemplifies all that had been charged against woman, 
but who even glories openly in the possession of these 
qualities, and by his art forces us to take her point of 
view, and all but sympathize with her. 

It is hard to say how far Chaucer himself was in 
sympathy with the views which the Wife of Bath pro- 
pounds on the subject of marriage and vir- TheArgu- 
ginity. That he was no mere glorifier of the "^^^^.^^^ 
sensual may go without saying ; but that he Celibacy. 
recognized the fallacy of the prevailing ideal of celi- 
bacy, and that besides his merely dramatic interest in 
the Wife of Bath he was also interested in breaking 
down a false idol, is quite probable. Professor Louns- 
bury has called attention to the fact that Chaucer has 
twice put into the mouth of the Host, in his words 
to the Monk (B 3133-3154) and to the Nun's Priest 
(B 4637-4646), opinions of a similar character, and on 
the basis of these facts he calls the Wife's Prologue a 
' revolutionary document,' in which the poet, shielding 
himself behind the ample figure of this clothmaker of 



234 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Bath, has spoken out with playful exaggeration his 
opinion on one of the questions of the day. 

Whether Chaucer's or not, the opinions are revo- 
lutionary enough even at the present day. This four- 
teenth-century advocate of a return to nature is, how- 
ever, so prolix in her speech, and so given to digression, 
that it is not wholly a work of supererogation to sum 
up briefly the argument she advances. 

A little while ago she had been told that since Christ 
went to but one wedding, she too, the much-married, 
should have confined herself to a single husband. Then, 
too, what a sharp word Christ spoke to the woman of 
Samaria anent her five husbands, — precisely the num- 
ber which the Wife has reached herself ! But the good 
woman frankly confesses that the significance of that 
rebuke she has never been able to understand. There 
is another ' gentil text,' though, the meaning of which 
she can easily grasp, — the command to be fruitful and 
multiply. God never defined the number of husbands 
which might be taken. 

But of no nombre mencioun made he, 
Of bigamye or of octogamye. 

(Notice the delicious coinage of a new word, necessary 
to contain the new wine of her advanced opinions.) 
Solomon had many wives at once. ' Would that similar 
liberty were allowed to me ! ' sighs the Wife of Bath. 

So far, it will be noticed, the argument has dealt 
with second marriage ; but there are those who recom- 
mend the avoidance of marriage altogether, and praise 
perpetual virginity. Yet God has never expressly com- 
manded virginity, and the apostle, though he counsels 
it, does not enjoin it. Up to this point the discussion 
has consisted of an appeal to the authority of holy 
writ ; the Wife now descends boldly to the ground of 
common sense. If every one should practice virginity. 



THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE 235 

wlio, pray, is to beget virgins and bring them forth? 
It may be that virginity is more excellent than the 
married state ; very well, wooden vessels are needed 
in the household as well as golden. The Wife of Bath 
is quite contented with the humbler lot. Once more 
there is a bold appeal to common sense : it is the 
obvious intention of nature that man should marry 
and bring forth issue. Having established her point, 
she can afford to be generous to her opponents ; they 
may follow virginity if they please : — 

I nil envye no virginitee ; 
Lat hem be breed of pured whete-seed, 
And lat us wyves boten barly-breed ; 
And yet with barly-breed, Mark telle can, 
Our lord Jesu refresshed many a man. 
In swich estaat as god hath cleped us 
I wol persevere, I nam nat precious. 

Despite its playful tone, the argument is a good one, 
and it may well be believed that Chaucer is at least 
half in earnest. 

The chief interest of this P rologue JifiS. not in its 
character as a controversial pamphletTbut in ,j,j^g ^jj^ 
itsj3gj:traiyftl of n, hiHTKl]]-tXI^ ^^ ^^ ^ great of Bath, 
miman document. 

/Looked at superficially, the Wife of Bath is a thor- 
oughly healthy animal, somewhat over forty, of 
substantial figure, dressed conspicuously, exceedingly 
coarse in her speech, but withal a friendly, good-natured 
woman, and by no means lacking in shrewd, practical 
wisdom. Though she has picked vip many odds and 
ends of knowledge from her scholar-husband, Jankin, 
her manner of speech shows her to be essentially illit- 
erate. Her whole theory of life is one of frank ani- 
malism. This is what one takes in at first glance, 
and this, probably, is all that her companions on the 



236 



THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 



Canterbury journey saw in her ; but Chaucer saw more. 
He saw that with all her apparent gayety, she was not 
happy. 

She begins her long preamble with mention of ' wo 
'that is in mariage.' She argues at length to prove 
that marriage is the summum, honum of life, and she has 
had the singular good fortune to enter five times into 
this blessed state ; surely she should know the quintes- 
sence of bliss. But none of her marriages has been 
fortunate; of her husbands she says: 'Thiige of h^ 
were^ojiB-a^-two^were baddfi ^ ' but w ith none oFth^ 
wa§__she_happy\ The first. iliree she hacT^marrieil for 
their mqjieyv-JThfiy were too old to satisTy~lrcr"lust; 
tlieyT!ttyedu_ajid-4ia#a«g«edr4a£LC4_they^ould not even 
give ber money enaugh. to sajisfj^ herTlove-ofZfiiiery' 
The fourth husband waa^a reveler, who made lier^as 

ls^a3-'«heJha(r&a?de-his_pj:fidefiessors. The fif^ 
clerk Jankin, tried to lord it over lierr~nild~toid-^er 
uncomplimentary stories from his books. When she 
had at last won the mastery, he disobligingly died. Is 
)t this ' tribulacioun in mariage ' ? 

She is haunted, moreover, with a vague suspicion 
that, argue as she may to the contrary, her way of 
life is not the right one, a subconscious conviction that 
reaches masterful expression in the single exclamation : 

Alias ! alias ! that ever love was sinne ! 

A further proof of her failure to attain happiness is 
found in her restlessness. As the souls of the lustful 
in the first circle of the Inferno are blown about con- 
tinually by the whirlwind, so she has been driven by 
her restlessness to seek strange lands. She has been to 
Rome, to Santiago in Spain, to Boulogne, to Cologne. 
Thrice she has made the long journey to Jerusalem. 
When we meet her, she is on the road to Canterbury. 



THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE 237 

^It is the same insatiable lust for travel which marks 
the restlessness of our modern life. 

Worst of all, the Wife of Bath is growing old. Mar- 
ried first at the age of twelve, she is already forty 
when she marries her fifth husband. She must now be 
nearing fifty. Her good days are done. If, as Horace 
tells us, no piety can give pause to wrinkles and sure- 
advancing age, neither can the impiety of rank animal- 
ism. It is not only ' indomitable death ' whose approach 
she has to dread, but the dulling of the sharp edge of 
pleasure on which her fancied happiness depends. 

' But age, alias ! that al wol envenyme, 
Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith; 
Lat go, fare-wel, the devel go therwith ! 
The flour is goon, ther is na-more to telle, 
The bren, as I best can, now moste I selle; 
But yet to be right mery wol I fonde.* 

The spirit of reckless bravado in these lines cannot 
blind us to the terrible truth they contain. The last line 
in particular tells us that the gayety of her character is 
a forced gayety : — 

* But yet to be right mery wol I fonde. ^ 

Ther e is, as Profe ssor Lounshury^Jias-said,^ a profound 
' undertone of inel ancholy ' r unning through all the 
appa rant-j^ay£ty~QL-tliej3iece. 

It is this deeper significance of the character which 
we must urge against those who are tempted to quarrel 
with the Prologue on the score of morality. Chaucer 
has indeed chosen to depict an immoral woman, and he 
has allowed her to reveal herself with a coarse plainness 
of language which is sure to shock the fastidious of 
a more prudish age, and which may well have shocked 
the more fastidious of Chaucer's contemporaries; but 
we must remember that Chaucer has not apologized for 



238 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

her immorality, nor attempted to represent it as other 
than it is. Some readers may find the poem disgusting ; 
but no one can call it seductive. Chaucer has, more- 
over, preserved the moral balance by his clear appre- 
ciation of the fact that unstinted gratification of sense 
is not the road to happiness. 

Chaucer himself seems to have been proud of this 
creation of his art, for three times he refers to the 
Wife of Bath in other poems,^ and critics generally 
have agreed in placing the Prologue in the first rank 
of the poet's compositions. No one can deny that in it 
Chaucer's genius is shown in fullest measure; but in 
spite of its great interest as a human document, and its 
unquestioned technical excellence, sane criticism must 
recognize that its subject excludes it from the rank of 
highest art. Without doubt, Chaucer's portrayal of the 
Wife of Bath is a more dazzling achievement than his 
portrayal of Constance in the tale of the Man of Law ; 
and yet the cause of true art and of humanity is fur- 
thered rather by the figure of Constance than by that 
of the Wife of Bath. 

THE WIFE OF BATH'S TALE 

Striking as is the revelation of herself which the 
Wife of Bath gives in her Prologue, we do not realize the 
full range of her character till we have read her tale. 
Th^_cejnlj:ai_idea^f^ the tale, that J;he highest wish of 
woman is to have sovereignty over husband^aad lover, 
is_so_eminently siiited'to^the'W'ife oF^athJJiat-jaoiJire 
jttstifiedTTrrusstrtnmg th at JJhaueer-xhoa* the^talajsvith 
direct reference to tlie tellei-, and that he intended us 
to take the tale as well as the Prologue into account in 
estimating lier^character.' One is surprised to find the 
tale so free from coarseness. Though in two passages 

1 In the Cleric's Tale, the Merchant's Tale, and the Envoy to Buklon. 



THE WIFE OF BATH'S TALE 239 

at least the story offers opportunity for coarse treatment, 
it is marked throughout by its delicacy and grace. It is 
a tale of faery both in substance and in manner. Pro- 
fessor Lounsbury says of it : ' The tale is full of wisest 
observation, of keenest insight into character and 
motive. The incidents, moreover, are woven together 
so artistically, and follow each other so naturally, that 
the reader loses sight or thought of the central im- 
possibility that lies at the foundation of the details 
which have been built upon it. More than all, the story, 
starting from the earth, lifts itself up to and loses itself 
in that poetical atmosphere to which nothing but the 
highest genius can attain.' * We must recognize, then, 
that beside the coarseness and the shrewd practicality 
of this woman, there runs a vein of really delicate 
imagination, a fact which will explain to us the under- 
tone of melancholy which is perceptible in her coarsest 
talk. 

This apparently incongruous coexistence of coarse- 
ness and delicacy furnishes us, I think, with the key to 
her whole character. I conceive of the Wife of Bath 
as endowed originally with strong passions and vivid 
imagination, with what we are wont to call the poetic 
temperament. Had she been born in a palace, she 
might have become your typical heroine of romance, 
her inevitable lapses from virtue gilded over with the 
romantic adornments of moonlight serenades and secret 
trysts. But born heiress to a weaver's bench, there 
was no chance for her poetic imaginativeness to develop. 
Laughed at by others for her fine-spun fancies, she 
would certainly grow ashamed of them herself. I can 
believe that her excessive coarseness of speech was 
originally an affectation assumed to conceal the natural 
fineness of her nature, an affectation which easily 

1 Studies in Chaucer^ 3. 418. 



240 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

became a second nature to her. Her strong passions 
demanded expression ; and denied a more poetical 
gratification, and quite unrestrained by moral character, 
they expressed themselves in coarse vulgarity. It is only 
when called upon to tell a story, to leave the practical 
every-day world, in which she is forced to live, for the 
other world of fantasy, that the original imaginativeness 
of her nature finds opportunity to reveal itself. If this 
conception of the Wife of Bath be correct, her charac- 
ter becomes almost a tragic one, or at any rate belongs 
to that higher realm of comedy which borders on tears. 
Stories closely akin to that told by the Wife of Bath 
are found elsewhere in English literature. Gower tells 
essentially the same story, thouerh in much 

Sources. . . . 

less artistic form, in the first book of the Con- 

fessio Amantis. In Bishop Percy's folio manuscript 
there are two ballads — the Wedding of Sir Gawain 
and Dame Ragnell and the Marriage of Sir Ga- 
waine — which develop the same theme. Still another 
instance of the tale is the border ballad of King 
Henrie in Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
Similar stories of a loathly lady who becomes beautiful 
in her marriage-bed are found in Icelandic, Gaelic, 
French, German, and in the Orient. Indeed, the idea 
of disenchantment by a kiss is a common theme of fairy 
tales, as in the well-known nursery story of the Sleep- 
ing Beauty.^ . 

Thouo;h Gower's version and Chaucer's are nearer 
akin to one another than to any other of the tales known 
to us, neither seems to have been direct source for 
the other. Dr. G. H. Maynadier,^ who has gone most 
thoroughly into the question, believes that the tales 
of Chaucer and Gower go back ultimately to an Old 

* See Originals and Analogues, pp. 481-524. 

^ The Wife of Bath's Tale, its Sources arid Analogues, London, 1901. 



THE WIFE OF BATH'S TALE 



241 



Irish original ; but his argument, though interesting, 
is so involved that one fails to be convinced by it. 

The^ Friar, always rea,dy,_ as the Summnner deelaxes, 
tn^intprmpflt^lft in mnthp rsthat jio not cfl jiperu him, has 
lau^;hfiji-^tt-th«-^iniliie JenpEIolJie_JWi^^ TheTaie 
preamble to her tale. She does notj mmedi- ^^^^^^■ 
atety^n swerhim ; in de£d»Jbhe load=^ced Summoner 
grrPTrJTpf nnjih^^^ ! l^n t wlipn f.liP TTnc t ] ^a s o a ll ed the 
Friar . and Sumnaoficr-to t«-der^ she- take* oeeaskm^ in 
the opening paragraph of her tale, to pay back her 
critic mth a clever dig. Her tale is to be a fairy tale, 
and so she begins with the remark that 

In th' olde dayes of the king Artbour, 
Of which that Britons speken greet honour, 
Al was this land fulfild of fayerye. 
The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, 
Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede; 

but now their place has been taken by these limiters 
and other holy friars : — 

For ther as wont to walken was an elf, 
Ther walketh now the limitour himself. 

As a result of this change, — 

Wommen may go saufly up and doun, 
In every bush, or under every tree ; 
Ther is noon other incubus but be, 
And he ne wol doon hem but dishonour.' 

The Wife of Bath has introduced her tale and paid 
back the FrmT^|jbhe_SMlieJiii^T--^wh^ 
ETon— trf^delicate im agination_ wit.1i nngygp insinuation 
sferres admii'SMy'as a tra nsition from the P rolo^e to 




e -will not carry them off to fairy-land ; he will only dis- 



honor them.' This is the reading of Skeat's text and of the best 
MSS. The Globe Edition, following the Cambridge MS., reads : ' And 
he ne wol doon hem won dishonour,' which must, of course, be taken 
aa sarcasm. 



242 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

The stoi'y proceeds smoothly for a while, till the 
knight begins to collect answers to the riddle, 'What 
thing is it that wommen most desyren?' The Wife 
finds herself face to face again with the question she 
has debated in her Prologue ; and fifty-seven lines are 
devoted to a discussion of the various answers sus:- 
gested, and to the tale of Midas's wife (learned doubt- 
less from husband number five). One may notice that 
she here returns for a while from the land of fiction 
to the problems of reality. This is suggested subtly 
by a change of tense, and by the introduction of the 
pronoun ' we,' which indicates her lively personal par- 
ticipation in the matter. Compare, for example, the* 

Somme seyde, wommen loven best richesse 
of line 925 with 

Somme seyde, that our hertes been most esed, 
When that we been yflatered and yplesed 

of lines 929, 930, and with change to the present tense : 

And somme seyn, how that we loven best 
For to be free, and do right as us lest. 

The story is resumed with the charmingly poetical 
vision of the four and twenty ladies dancing under a 
forest side, who vanish as the knight approaches. The 
picture is not elaborated as Spenser would have treated 
it ; ' it is merely suggested to the imagination. It is 
sufficient, however, to furnish us with the hint that the 
loathly lady is not of human kind. One may notice 
in passing how Chaucer has managed to introduce an 
element of surprise into the story. The hag does not, 
as in Gower, specify the condition on which she will 
extricate the knight from his difficulty, she merely 
demands the granting of her first request; not till 
after the knight's triumphant answer to the queen, is 

1 Cf. Faerie Queene, 6, 10. 10-18. 



THE WIFE OF BATH'S ? ALE 243 

marriage mentioned. Nor does the reader learn the 
answer to the riddle till the knight speaks it out in full 
court. 

Brought to the fulfillment of his pledge, the knight 
ungenerously, though not unnaturally, objects that his 
wife is loathly and old and come of low kind. This 
gives occasion for the long and excellent sermon on the 
nature of true nobility which occupies the last quarter 
of the tale : — 

Loke who that is most vertuous alway, 
Privee and apert, and most entendeth ay 
To do the gentil dedes that he can, 
And tak him for the grettest gentil man. 

The noble ideas nobly expressed in this speech, which 
suggest familiar words of Burns and of Tennyson, 
though part of Chaucer's personal creed, as shown by 
their reappearance in his balade of Gentilesse^ are not 
his original discovery. A similar strain of democracy 
may be found in Dante, in Petrarch, in Boccaccio, 
and in the Roman de la Rose. Some exception has 
been taken, however, to the dramatic appropriateness 
of such sentiments to the character of the Wife of 
Bath. Ten Brink says, for example : ' The thoroughly 
sound moral of the long sermon given by the wise old 
woman, before her metamorphosis, to her young, unwill- 
ing husband, comes more from the heart of the poet 
than from the Wife of Bath.' ^ But is not the Wife 
of Bath, as a prosperous member of the middle class, 
precisely the person to assert that true gentility is 
not the peculiar possession of the nobly born? If the 
poet has lent to these lines a tone of higher poetry 
than the Wife can be conceived capable of, he has done 
only what Shakespeare does continually. The function 
of the dramatist is not that of the mere reporter. 

1 History of English Literature (English trans.), 2. 1G3. 



244 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Another possible objection that may be urged against 
this passage is that so long a digression interrupts too 
seriously the progress of the tale. On the contrary, 
it is an artistic device of the highest skill. A loathly 
hag is to be transformed suddenly into a beautiful lady. 
Such a process makes a large draught on our powers 
of belief. The high poetry of the long discourse serves 
to bridge over the change ; our minds are for the time 
being diverted from what is going on. We are held 
captive by the spell of her poetry, and at the conclusion 
of the speech are not surprised to find that the speaker 
is of wondrous beauty. As a further instance of Chau- 
cer's art in the management of the metamorjihosis, we 
may notice that he refrains from any detailed descrip- 
tion either of her ugliness or of her beauty. Our minds 
are less startled by the change from ugliness in general 
to beauty in general than by that of a definite type of 
ugliness into a definite type of beauty. 

The tale is one of Chaucer's poetic triumphs. 

THE FKIAR'S tale 

At the conclusion of the Wife of Bath's lonj ^re- 
ambl e, it will be remembe re d, the Friar had * interrn ed- 
dled ' with a derisive-laugh .at-the good woman's long- 
windedness,_and-Jiai been -promptly called to order by 
tli e Summ oner. ^^^^n U pi-prm'tjor] i^r, f ^] ] > ^ \ r^] a y J2J'^'h 
should uloI J3e_coinplimentajj_to_JJiajit^ ; 

and only with difficulty could^ the Host calm JJiem 
dxjwn , amTwi n^a^Jiearing for the Wife of Bath. All 
through this^afoECfid-ailence, the quarrel has been 
smouldering ; and^the Friar has cast dark looks upon 
his natural foe. When Dame Alice has ended, the 
Friar hastens to seize the opportunity to strike the first 
blaw. His tale is ably paid baok by the Summoner ; 
and each reader must decide for himself which comes 



THE FRIAR'S TALE 245 

i«ut liBtt er in this war of ta les. The enmity of the 
Friar and the Sunimoner is not come of new ; their 
quarrel is the quarrel of their professions. The Sum- 
moner belongs to the organization of the so-called sec- 
ular clergy, which includes tlie parish priests, the arch- 
deacons, and the bishops. The Friar, as a member of 
a mendicant order, belongs to the so-called religious 
clergy — those who had taken definite religious vows, 
and belonged to world-wide organizations, which held 
authority directly from the Pope, and were independ- 
ent of the jurisdiction of the national church. Such 
a co-existence of separate ecclesiastical organizations 
within the same realm gave rise, of course, to endless 
jars ; for the religious clergy were continually en- 
croaching on the privileges of their secular brethren, 
and the latter not unnaturally tried to curb their 
power. Thus the Friar boasts that he and his order 
are outside the Summoner's jurisdiction ; to which the 
Summoner gives countercheck quarrelsome by the 
answer that so are ' the wommen of the styves.' Since 
we know that the Friar could rage ' as it were right 
a whelpe,' and since the ' fyr-reed cherubines face ' of 
the Summoner portends a choleric disposition, their 
quarrel was a foregone conclusion. As it was appar- 
ently Chaucer's purpose to show up both professions 
impartially, he chose the clever device of ' making 
each of these rascals demolish the other,' a device 
which serves also to heighten the dramatic realism of 
the Canterbury pilgrimage. 

/ The Friar's Tale is merely an application to the 
profession of the Summoner of a popular anecdote, pre- 
viously told at the expense of a bailiff or a „ 

'' '^ .. Sources. 

lawyer, but equally appropriate to any other 
unpopular functionary. Two analogues to Chaucer's 
tale are given in the Chaucer Society's volume of 



246 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Originals and Analogues. The first of these, and the* 
one which illustrates most clearly what the poet had 
to build on, is found in a volume, printed probably 
about 1480, written by a Dominican friar named John 
Herolt, which is intended as a helj) to sermon-writers. 
The second section of the work contains a series of 
short anecdotes which a preacher might find useful 
as examples to point his moral. Among them is the 
story just referred to. Of course this volume appeared 
nearly a century later than the Canterhiiry Tales ; but 
the anecdote may well have been in circulation long 
before. If Chaucer found it in some similar work on 
sermon-writing, its appropriateness to the preaching 
Friar is very obvious. The heightened effectiveness 
of Chaucer's tale, which, in the absence of any evi- 
dence to the contrary, we may suppose due to his own 
genius, is clearly shown by a comparison with this 
Latin Narrative of a certain Wicked Seneschal which 
I shall give here in translation. 

There was a certain man, a seneschal and lawyer, 
a calumniator of the poor, and a despoiler of goods of 
every sort. One day he went to court to bring a suit, 
and to enrich himself. A certain man met him in the 
way and said to him, ' Where are you going ? and 
what is your business ? ' The first man answered, ' I 
am going to make money.' And the second said, ' I 
am just such a one as you. Let 's go together.' When 
the first man consented to this, the second said to him, 
' How do you make your money ? ' And he answered, 
' The substance of the poor, as long as they have any- 
thing, which I get by law-suits and prosecutions, either 
justly or unjustly. Now I have told you how I make 
my money, tell me, prithee, how do you make yours ? ' 
The second answered him and said, ' I put down to my 
profit everything that is given to the devil in curses.' 



THE FRIAR'S TALE 247 

The first man laughed, and made fun of the second, 
not knowing that he was the devil. After a little, as 
they were going through a town, they heard a poor 
man curse a calf, which he was leading to market, 
because it would not go straight ; and they also heard 
a similar curse from a woman who was beatins: her 
boy. Then said the first to the second, ' Here 's a 
chance for you to make money if you wish. Take the 
boy and the calf.' The second answered, 'I can't, be- 
cause they are not cursing from their hearts.' Now 
when they had gone a little further, a band of poor 
men came along, going to the law-court, and seeing the 
seneschal, they all began to hurl curses at him with 
one accord. And the second said to the first, ' Do you 
hear what they say ? ' 'I hear,' said he, ' but it makes 
no difference to me.' And the second said, ' They are 
cursing from their hearts, and giving you over to the 
devil, and so you shall be mine.' And straightway he 
snatched him up and disappeared with him.^ 
/This is a clever and diverting anecdote ; but Chau- 
cer's tale is something more. We may notice first of 
all the heightened realism given by the de- chaucer's 
tailed description of the Summoner and his ^^^^• 
methods, and of the fiend, as he rides in his gay dis- 
guise of yeoman's green ; by the vivid picture of the 
carter urging his horses, Brok and Scot, through the 
heavy slough, whacking them and cursing them while 
the wagon sticks, calling down all the blessings of 
heaven upon them when the wheels begin to turn ; 
and by the half-humorous, half-pathetic figure of old 
Mabely indignantly repelling the Summoner's persecu- 
tion, wishing him and the new pan, which he covets, 
both to the devil together. The dialogue between the 

^ Still another analogue, from the Zurich poet, Usteri (1763-1827), 
is given by F. Vetter in Anglia, Beiblatt, 13. 180, 181. 



248 THE POETKY OF CHAUCER 

two travelers is, as Ten Brink calls it, a little master- 
piece. Though he is entertaining him unawares, the 
Summoner finds the fiend such eminently congenial 
company, that he inmiediately pledges him a life-long 
friendship. Shameless as he is, he none the less tries 
to hide the fact of his detested calling : — 

He dorste nat, for verray filthe and shame, 
Seye that he was a somnour, for the name. 

Deliciously humorous is the series of hints by which 
the fiend gradually reveals his true identity. He, too, 
is a sort of bailiff, who must gather in his lord's rents. 
As for his dwelling-place, it is ' fer in the north con- 
tree ' (the region where Lucifer set up his power) ; * 
the yeoman hopes to see his new friend there some 
day ; he will give him such clear directions before they 
part, that he cannot possibly miss it. The fiend's ac- 
count of his own unscrupulous methods draws from 
the Summoner a frank confession that he makes off 
with everything that he can find, ' but-if it be to 
hevy or to hoot.' The Summoner must know the name 
of this stranger so completely after his own heart. 

This yeman gan a litel for to smyle. 
• Brother,' quod he, ' wiltow that I thee telle ? 
I am a feeud, my dwelling is in helle.' 

The Summoner is naturally a little startled at the 
revelation, but not for long ; he is not the man to give 
up so charming an acquaintance for a trifling circum- 
stance. One may be a little taken aback on discover- 
ing that a chance acquaintance is a rabid anarchist or 
violent atheist. If he is well dressed, and a gentleman, 
we can pardon him some eccentricities of belief ; and 

1 The hell of Teutonic mythology was located in the north, as the 
region of darkness. A false interpretation of Isaiah 14. 12-14 may 
have helped to incorporate the same idea into Christian myth. Cf. 
MUton, Paradise Lost, 5. 755. 



THE SUMMONER'S TALE 249 

then, too, a man of revolutionary tendencies is so in- 
teresting. The Summoner begins immediately to ques- 
tion him on the ' privitees ' of a fiend's existence. The 
fiend, who, we may notice, has a supreme contempt for 
the speculations of theologians — 

I do no fors of your divinitee — 
obligingly satisfies his curiosity, so far as these things 
can be explained to a mere mortal. Hereafter, he pro- 
mises, the Summoner shall come where he needs no 
further teaching : — 

For thou shalt by thyn owene experience 
Conne in a chayer rede of this sentence 
Bet than Virgyle, whyl he was on lyve, 
Or Dant also. 

The Summoner may be professor of demonology, if he 
wishes, and lecture from a professional chair draped in 
the red, not of a doctor of divinity, but the red glare of 
hell-fire. 

There is one moment of suspense, just before the 
tale reaches its catastrophe. Old Mabely wishes the 
Summoner to the devil with all her heart, but with 
one proviso, ' but he wol him repente.' The Summoner, 
who has surely had warning enough of what he is to 
expect, who was quick enough to suggest to his diabolic 
friend that the carter's horses were legitimate prey, is 
fatally blind. Proudly he asserts that he has no inten- 
tion of repenting, and the fiend bears him off body and 
soul to hell, 

Wher-as that somnours ban hir heritage. 

/ THE SUMMONEK'S TALE 

/Once, near the beginning of the Friar's tale, the 
Summoner could not refrain an interruption ; but, on 
the whole, he kept himself very well in hand, know- 
ing that the hour of his revenge was near. At the end 



250 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

of the tale, however, he is quaking like an aspen leaf 
for wrath, and, unable to wait for the slower revenge 
of his tale, serves an hors d'oeu'vre in the shape of a 
not very savory anecdote, which describes the partic- 
ular place in hell reserved for these cursed friars. If 
the Friar has been able to tell much of the true nature 
of fiends, it is no wonder, for 

Freres and feendes been but lyte a-sonder. 

The tale of the Sumraoner is, as far as our present 
knowledge suffers us to say, mainly original. The cen- 
tral idea of it, to be sure, may very well have 
been suggested by an old French story, the 
Tale of the Priest's Bladder ^ versified by one Jakes 
de Basiu.^ This story tells of a priest near Antwerp, 
who is visited on his death-bed by two Jacobin friars, 
who beg an offering. He has already made his will, 
and at first refuses them outright ; but when they are 
importunate, he bids them come next day with their 
prior, and he will give them a jewel which he would 
not part with for a thousand silver marks. The jewel 
turns out to be his own bladder, which they may 
cleanse and use for a pepper-box ; and the friars go 
home, laughed at of all. Quite possibly Chaucer knew 
some variant of this tale, now lost to us. The definite 
localization of the incident at Holderness in York- 
shire makes this probable. If such a variant existed, 
it probably contained the change in the nature of the 
bequest, and the germ, at least, of the closing scene 
in the hall of the lord, where the young squire wins 
a new gown by his clever resolution of the problem 
which the churl had set. We may assume, with some 

^ The tale is given by Legrand d'Aussy in his collection of Fabliaux 
ou Contes, Fables et Romans du Xlle et (hi Xllle Siecle (1829). It is 
reprinted in Originals and Analogues of Some of Chaucer^s Canterbury 
Tales, pp. 137-144. 



THE SUMMONER'S TALE 251 

confidence, that the long hypocritical prediction with 
which Friar John favors the bed-rid churl, and the per- 
fect life-likeness of the scene, are Chaucer's original 
addition. 

ifSome readers, I suppose, will be offended at the 
coarseness of the Summoner^ s Tale. Coarse it cer- 
tainly is in its closing portion, but not in ^ijesum- 
the least vicious. So callous is the wretched moner's 

Tale . 

friar of the tale in his miserable hypocrisies, 
that he needs a coarse insult by way of discipline. In- 
deed, the outspoken frankness of the conclusion comes 
as a positive relief after the sanctimonious pretenses 
of the friar. As for the coarseness of old Thomas, we 
may dismiss that as does the lady in the castle, whither 
the irate friar has betaken himself for redress : — 
I seye, a cherl hath doon a cherles dede ; 

as for the coarseness of the squire, that is so ingenious 
that it is surely forgivable. 

But the real literary value of the Summoners Tale 
lies not in the plot of it, however artistically conducted, 
so much as in the masterful portrait of the dissembling 
friar. James Russell Lowell has called attention to the 
rich sufforestiveness of the line : — 

And fro the bench he droof awey the cat. 

*We know without need of more words that he has 
chosen the snuggest corner.' Admirable, too, is the 
picture of the good-wife with her kindly hospitality, 
her openness to flattery, and her ample faith in the 
efficacy of Friar John's prayers, contrasting sharply 
with the companion picture of her churlish husband 
and his rough incredulity. 

At the shameless hypocrisy of the friar, one knows 
not whether to laugh or to weep. So complete a master 
is he of the art of shamming that, even in his trans- 



252 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

port of rage, he remembers to protest at the title of 
' master ' which the lord bestows on him : — 

* No maister, sire,' quod he, ' but servitour, 
Thogh I have had in scole swich honour. 
God lyketh nat that " Raby " men us calle, 
Neither in market ne in your large halle ; ' 

a disclaimer which is careful to specify that the title is 
not at all inappropriate. The only thing he forgets is, 
that for a preacher who has so ably denounced the sin 
of wrath, it is hardly consistent to give such an emi- 
nent example of the sin in his own person : — 

He looked as it were a wilde boor; 

He grinte with his teeth, so was he wrooth. 

All this is humorous enough on the surface of things ; 
but to one who knows something of the high ideals 
which St. Francis and St. Dominic set before their 
orders of mendicants, and something of the great work 
for humanity, and for true religion, which these orders 
achieved in the early days of their purity, this picture 
of degradation has more of tragedy than of comedy. 
It is precisely the greatest tragedy and the most 
inexplicable mystery of our little life, that the great 
institutions founded by our wisest and best for the 
attainment of the noblest aims should, almost without 
exception, develop, sooner or later, into instruments 
of positive evil. The friar does not sin in ignorance ; 
his long sermon shows that he had all the precepts of 
his pious founder at the tip of his oily tongue ; but 
these precepts have become a hollow mockery, and 
worse. Unfortunately, the testimony of Chaucer does 
not stand alone. Boccaccio, Gower, Langland, and 
Wiclif, men of very diverse temperaments and preju- 
dices, all agree with Chaucer in painting the mendi- 
cant orders as hopelessly corrupt — a thinly whited 
sepulchre filled with dead men's bones. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE CANTERBURY TALES, GROUPS E, F, G, H, I 

THE clerk's tale 

Apparently the university students of the fourteenth 
century were as diverse a lot as those of the present 
day. Clerk Nicholas of the Miller s Tale^ with his 
gay sautrye,' and the two Cambridge students who 
take their mischievous revenge on the Miller of Trump- 
ington, represent one species of the genus ; while the 
poor clerk of the Canterbury pilgrimage belongs to 
the class which we thoughtlessly dismiss with the word 
'grind.' Lean he is of figure, sober of his bearing, 
threadbare as to his coat : — 

For him was lever have at his beddes heed 

Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed, 

Of Aristotle and his philosophye, 

Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye. 

Of studie took he most cure and most hede. 

Sharply contrasted with the ready assurance of 'hende 
Nicholas ' is the bashful reserve of this nameless Clerk 
of Oxenf ord : — 

' Sir clerk of Oxenford,' our hoste sayde, 

• Ye ryde as coy and stille as dooth a mayde, 

Were newe spoused, sitting at the bord; 

This day ne herde I of your tonge a word. 

I trow ye studie aboute som sophyme.' 

So academic is his bearing, that the Host feels it neces- 
sary to request that he refrain from preaching, and from 
too scholarly a manner of speech. But the Clerk is no 



254 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

mere mechanical ' grind.' We discover the eager play 
of an active and original mind in his very way of speak- 
ing, ' short and quik, and ful of hy sentence.' It is a 
delight to see the sudden flash of enthusiasm with which 
he refers to the great and worthy clerk, Fraunceys 
Petrark. That he is by no means lacking in a healthy 
vein of roguish humor, the closing stanzas of his tale 
show clearly enough. That the Host's warning against 
too lofty and pedantic a style was superfluous, the tale 
itself may bear witness. It is written in 'an honest 
method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very much more 
handsome than fine.' 

In response to the Host's command to tell a 
tale, the Clerk says : — 



Sources. 



I wol yow telle a tale which that I 
Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk, 
As preved by his wordes and his werk. 
He is now deed and nayled in his cheste, 
I prey to god so yeve his soule reste! 
Fraunceys Petrark, the laureat poete, 
Highte this clerk. 

Chaucer's tale of Griselda is, indeed, only a close trans- 
lation of Petrarch's Fahle of Obedience and Wifely 
Faith, which is in its turn a somewhat freer Latin ren- 
dering of the tenth novella of the tenth day in Boccac- 
cio's Decameron/^ Prefixed to Petrarch's rendering of 
the tale is a Latin letter to Boccaccio telling how the 
translation came to be made. Though Petrarch and 
Boccaccio were close friends, and though the Decameron 
had been written at least twenty years earlier, Petrarch 
seems not to have read it till a year or two before his 
death, which occurred in 1374. Even then Petrarch 
found the book too big to read through. He merely 
glanced over the greater part of it, reading carefully 
only the introductory description of the plague and 



THE CLERK'S TALE. 255 

the concluding tale of Griselda, The latter impressed 

\him so deeply that he committed it to memory, and was 

[in. the habit of repeating it to his friends. Wishing to 

\ make it current among those who knew no Italian, he 

/ found leisure to turn it into Latin, retelling it in his 

1 own words, adding and changing a little here and there. 

,- That Chaucer used Petrarch's version rather than 

Boccaccio's original we know from the Clerk's explicit 

statement. Independently of that, a comparison of the 

tliree versions establishes the fact beyond shadow of 

doubt. Great as is Chaucer's debt to Boccaccio, we have 

no evidence that he ever read a line of the work on 

which Boccaccio's fame now chiefly rests>;:/The problem 

of Boccaccio's sources for the tale is a puzzling one, and 

fortunately is of no immediate concern to the student 

of Chaucer. We may notice, however, that the tale is 

found in a collection of French Fabliaux, ou Contes 

du Xllle et du Xlllle Siecle, edited by Le Grand 

(1781).^ 

^ If the question of Chaucer's source for the Clerk's 

I Tale is a simple one, very complicated is the question 

as to the exact way in which Petrarch's fable _, ,, 

•^ . The Sup- 

reached him. The Clerk of Oxenf ord is made posed Meet. 

to say that he learned the tale at Padua from cifaucer 

the worthy clerk, Fraunceys Petrark ; and this ^^^ 

Petrd>rcli* 

has been taken to mean that Chaucer himself 
heard the story from Petrarch's lips. At first blush there 
is much to lend probability to this interpretation. Pe- 
trarch's version of the tale was made in 1373, while the 
' ' laureat poete ' was actually living at Arqua, a suburb 
of Padua ; and 1373 is the date of Chaucer's first visit 
to Italy. What more likely than that Chaucer should 
have sought out the chief man of letters in all Italy, 

^ An abstract of the fabliau is given in Originals and Analogues to 
Some of Ciiaucer's Canterbury Tales, pp. 527-537. 



256 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

and that Petrarch, who, we know, was in the habit of 
reciting the tale to his friends, should have entertained 
his guest with the fable of Griselda ? If it is objected 
that Chaucer's version follows Petrarch's so closely that 
he must have had the Latin text before him as he wrote, 
it is plausibly suggested that Petrarch presented his 
visitor with a manuscript of the tale as a parting gift. 
Professor Skeat is so sure of the interpretation that he 
insists that any one who doubts it must accuse Chaucer 
of deliberate falsehood. Chaucer's romantic biographer, 
Godwin, even tells us just how the two poets felt on 
meeting, and what each said to the other. 

Nevertheless, there have long been skeptics to doubt 
this pleasing theory. Professor Lounsbury, after call- 
ing attention to the fact that the Canterhury Tales is a 
dramatic composition, and that it is the Clerk of Oxen- 
ford and not Chaucer who says he learned the tale from 
Petrarch at Padua, sums up with the sentence : ' We 
can creditably and honestly try hard to think that the 
two poets met ; but with the knowledge we at present 
possess, we have no right to assert it.' ^ Much as we 
should like to believe a story which appeals so strongly 
to our sense of what ought to have been, I fear that 
in view of recent investigations, even the cautious posi- 
tion of Professor Lounsbury is no longer tenable. Mr. 
F. J. Mather, after carefully investigating the exact 
date of Petrarch's composition of the fable, and the 
chronology of Chaucer's Italian journey, and looking 
into the conditions of traveling in the fourteenth 
century, has come to the following conclusions." For 
Petrarch's translation of the Griselda story ' any date in 
the early months of 1373 is possible, any date earlier 

^ Studies in Chaucer, 1. 68. 

2 ' On the asserted meeting of Chaucer and Petrarca,' Modern Lan- 
guage Notes, 12. 1-11. 



THE CLERK'S TALE 257 

than April is improbable.' The mission of which 
Chaucer was a member was sent primarily to conduct 
business at Genoa. Leaving England on December 1, 
1372, it could not have reached Genoa much before 
February 1, 1373.^ On reaching Genoa, Chaucer was 
detached from his associates and sent on special busi- 
ness to Florence. Supposing that he made no stay in 
Genoa, he may have been in Florence about February 
10. He was apparently back in Genoa by March 23. 
The length of his possible stay in Florence is thus seen 
to be only a few weeks; and diplomatic business is usu- 
ally not very quickly dispatched. Moreover, a journey 
from Florence to Padua, easy enough in the day of rail- 
ways, was then to be accomplished only by a long and 
dangerous ride over mountain roads, still made diffi- 
cult by the winter's snow. It seems improbable that 
Chaucer made this wide detour, but if he did, he could 
not have been in Padua later than March 15, a date too 
early for the probable composition of Petrarch's Latin 
version. 

We cannot assert positively that Petrarch and Chaucer 
did not meet ; but in the absence of any positive evi- 
dence of their meeting, we must admit that the proba- 
bilities are strongly against it. As for Chaucer's actual 
possession of the tale, Mr. Mather has shown that it 
speedily became popular, and that manuscripts of it 
were early multiplied. That Petrarch was dwelling near 
Padua, Chaucer might easily have learned without 
coming within two hundred miles of the place. 
^What we shall think of the Clerk's Tale will be 
largely determined by what we think of the criseida 
woman about whose personality the whole the Patient. 

^ An allowance of two months for the journey to Genoa is probably 
excessive. On his second Italian voyage of 1378, Chaucer was absent 
from England less than four months. The second journey, however, was 
made in the summer, when traveling was doubtless easier. 



258 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

action centres. We are shown a young peasant-girl of 
blameless life, who is suddenly taken from her daily 
round of unremitting toil and frugal simplicity to be 
made first lady of a great domain. The sweet nobility 
of her character is raised far above the play of outward 
circumstance. She fills her new station as naturally and 
simply as she had tended sheep or turned her spinning- 
wheel ; she gives to her husband the same unfeigned, 
unstinted love and devotion that she had given to her 
old and feeble father. With a character such as this, 
and with great beauty of person as its fitting shrine, it 
is no wonder that Marquis Walter loved her, and that 
his people came to look upon her as the brightest star 
of all their land. A character which can stand sudden 
prosperity without receiving a flaw can also stand ad- 
versit3^ With unquestioning obedience she suffers her 
children to be snatched from her, and herself to be sup- 
planted by an unknown rival. The crowning instance 
of her wonderful patience is her prayer to Walter to 
spare his new-found lady : — 

' O thing biseke I yow and warne also, 
That ye ne prikke with no tormentinge 
This tendre mayden, as ye han don mo; 
For she is fostred in hir norishinge 
More tendrely, and, to my siipposinge, 
She coude nat adversitee endure 
As coude a povre fostred creature.* 

Here is no word of reproach ; though the reproach in- 
evitably implied is heavy enough. Notice the carefully 
guarded phrase, 'as ye han don mo,' where mo means 
not me but more^ 'as you have done to others.'* 

^ Petrarch's Latin reads : ' Unum bona fide te precor ac moneo, ne 
banc illis aculeis agites, quibus alteram ag-itasti.' Boccaccio is a little 
more definite : ' Ma quanto posso vi priego, che quelle punture, le quali 
alV altra, che vostra fit, gia deste, non diate a questa.' (But I beg you 
■with all my might that you give not to this woman those pricks M'hieh 
you gave to the other who was yours.) 



THE CLERK'S TALE 259 

What are we to think of this matchless patience? 
Most modern readers, particularly women readers, I 
sixppose, will think it ridiculous, if not positively crim- 
inal. Imagine a convention of woman's rights advocates 
debating the conduct of Griselda ! ' Miserable, weak- 
spirited creature ! ' one hears them shriek. But those 
were the days when women still promised at the altar 
to obey their lords, and considered the promise as 
something more than a meaningless phrase. Moreover, 
Griselda was not only her husband's wife, but his subject 
as well ; and the obligation of the vassal to obey the 
lord was only less sacred than man's obligation to obey 
his God. Griselda merely lives up strictly to the letter 
and spirit of her obligation, and, one may add, to the 
letter and spirit of the command that we ' resist not 
evil,' a command which our modern world has agreed to 
ignore. But, some one exclaims, is not a woman's first 
duty to protect her offspring, and is not Griselda vir- 
tually an accomplice before the act to what she supposes 
to be the murder of her children ? A duty, doubtless, 
and a sacred one ; but by what authority do we call it 
her ' first duty ' ? Mothers have been known to urge 
their sons on to almost certain death in battle ; and the 
deed has been called one of noble patriotism. There is an 
old story, not yet quite forgotten, of a father who stood 
ready to sacrifice an only son, at what he believed to be 
the command of his God. He may have been mistaken ; 
Griselda may have been mistaken ; perhaps we shall 
one day be so civilized that the Spartan mother will 
no longer be held up as a model. The question of pre- 
cedence in moral duties is a more troublesome one than 
any that has vexed the master of ceremonies at a court 
levee ; and each age must be left to settle the matter for 
itself. Griselda merely put in practice what all her 
contemporaries held in theory. Petrarch was a man of 



260 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

enligEtened views, far in advance of his age ; yet it did 
not occur to him to question the Tightness of her conduct. 
He tells, in one of his letters, how he once gave the tale 
to a friend, and asked him to read it aloud. The friend 
broke down in the middle of the reading, and could not 
continue for his tears. I am not arguing the question 
on its merits ; I merely insist that he who would read 
the tale aright must imaginatively think himself into 
the spirit of a time long past, in which men held princi- 
ples quite other than ours, but in which, as in our own, 
there were found those who would answer unflinchingly 
to the stern voice of duty. Unquestioning obedience 
to duty is a quality too noble and too rare in any age to 
suffer us to question too nicely the occasion which calls 
it forth. The tale is, as Ten Brink calls it, ' the Song 
of Songs of true and tender womanhood.' 

Just what Chaucer himself thought of Griselda is 
not entirely clear to me. At the conclusion of the tale 
he makes the teller say : — 

This storie is seyd, nat for that wyves sholde 

Folwen Grisilde as in humilitee, 

For it were importable, though they wolde; 

But for that every wight, in his degree, 

Sholde be constant in adversitee 

As was Grisilde. 

The difficulty of interpretation lies in the word * importa- 
ble,' which means ' unbearable.' ^ Does it mean that such 
conduct would be unbearable to others, or that a woman 
who should strive to follow Griselda would be unable 
to bear the strain ? The context seems to me to favor 
the latter interpretation, in which case we shall conclude 
that Chaucer considered Griselda's humility entirely 
right, but for the majority of women an unattainable 
ideal. The roguish reference to the Wife of Bath, and 

^ Cf . Canterbury Tales, B 3792 : ' His peynes weren importable.' 



THE CLERK'S TALE 261 

the humorous envoy which follow are merely- intended 
to restore the playful tone which Chaucer wished 
should dominate the Canterbury Tales. 

One dramatic problem of peculiar difficulty is pre- 
sented by the character of the Marquis, Griselda's 
husband. The plot of the story demands that ^^^ 
he shall act with wanton cruelty, and cause his Marquis 
wife twelve years of needless sorrow. Yet it 
was not possible to paint him as a heartless villain ; for 
Griselda must not only obey him, but love him. This 
fundamental inconsistency cannot be removed; but 
the art of the story is shown in the extent to which it 
is concealed. 

The opening sections of the tale present him in a 
distinctly favorable light. He is young, handsome, and 
good-natured : — 

A fair persone, and strong, and yong of age, 
And ful of honour and of curteisye, 
Discreet ynogh his contree for to gye. 

All his people love him, both lords and commons. He 
has no vices ; in light-hearted carelessness he spends his 
time a-hawking and a-hunting. Though he was 

To speke as of linage, 
The gentilleste yborn of Lumbardye, 

he is quick to discern the true nobility of a peasant girl ; 
and, far from entertaining any dishonorable designs 
upon her, is ready to make her his wife, and treat her 
as his equal. It is easy to see the grounds of his- gen- 
eral popularity. 

Yet, withal, there is an unlovely side to his nature ; 
he is essentially selfish, a spoiled child. He neglects 
affairs of state, thinking only of his own pleasure. It 
is obviously his duty to marry and beget an heir; yet 
he prefers bachelor freedom, and has to be reminded 
of his duty by a delegation of his subjects. He is too 



262 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

good-natured to refuse the request ; but willf ullj^ declines 
the offer of his lords to choose a fitting consort for him, 
and asserts his liberty of action by flying in the face of 
conventionality and wedding a peasant. There is surely 
as much of pride as of generosity in his action; and one 
is tempted, too, to think that he foresees less interfer- 
ence to his liberty from a wife who is his inferior. 

He has his way, weds Griselda, and is proud to find 
his eccentric choice justified by Griselda's popularity, 
and by her dignity in her new position. He is fond of 
her as a spoiled boy is fond of a favorite horse, and in 
mere pride of possession proceeds to put her through 
her paces. As the reckless horseman is not contented 
that his mare can take an ordinary hedge or ditch, but 
keeps trying her at harder barriers to test the limits 
of her excellence, so Walter devises still harder tests of 
his wife's patience and obedience. He does not mean to 
be cruel; he believes in his wife, and intends to set all 
right in the end ; he loves her after a selfish fashion. 
Even when all is over, he feels no particle of remorse ; he 
has restored to her her children and the incomparable 
blessing of his own love. But those twelve years ! 

THE merchant's TALE 

Whatever Chaucer may have thought of Griselda as 
an ideal of womanhood, he was quite aware that actual 
realizations of the ideal are not over-numerous. The 
fabulous Chichevache, who feeds only on patient wives, 
is never in danger of a surfeit. Having depicted a wife 
of the type of Griselda, the poet restores the balance of 
actuality by telling, in the person of the Merchant, the 
not very edifying tale of January and May. 

As seen at the Tabard Inn, on the eve of the Canter- 
bury pilgrimage, no one would have suspected the skel- 
eton in the prosperous merchant's domestic closet. His 



THE MERCHANT'S TALE 263 

forked beard, his Flemish beaver hat, his ' botes clasped 
f aire and f etisly,' his self-satisfied manner of speech, — 

Souninge alway th'encrees of his winning, 
suggest no hidden tragedy. But he has listened with 
strange feelings to the Clerk's story of Griselda, who 
suffered twelve long years without a murmur. He, poor 
man, has been married but two months, — 

♦ And yet, I trowe, he that al his lyve 
Wyflees hath been, though that men wolde him ryve 
Unto the herte, ne coude in no manere 
Tellen so muchel sorwe, as I now here 
Coude tellen of my wyves cursednesse ! ' 

The Host, it will be remembered, has some experience 
in conjugal infelicity, and readily enough gives the 
Merchant leave to tell his tale. 

The greater part of the Merchant s Tale is, as far as 
we know, Chaucer's original creation ; onlyjbhejilimax 
of thetalfiribfi_scenein the garden, where the 

^* — " Sources . 

blindjme band r eeavers his sight just in time 
to witness- his-wife!sLinfidellty, a nd is persuaded th at^all 
was-doae-^r his own goodvCan be traced to^n earlier 
original. The particular version of this ' pear-tree story ' 
which Chaucer used is not known to us; but several 
analogous tales, European and Oriental, are given in 
the Chaucer Society's volume of Originals and Ana- 
logues^'^ which maybe read and compared by those who 
think it worth while to trace the genesis of a tale which 
was hardly worth telling in the first place. Of these 
analogues, the best known is the ninth novella of the 
seventh day in Boccaccio's Decameron. This, though 
obviously a related tale, differs materially from the ver- 
sion Chaucer must have followed, the element of the 
husband's blindness being entirely lacking. Even in 
the portion of the tale which is borrowed, Chaucer's 
1 Pp. 177-188, 341-36-1. 



264 THE. POETRY OF CHAUCER 

originality may be seen. As Tyrwhitt says : ' Whatever 
was the real origin of this tale, the machinery of the 
faeries which Chaucer has used so happily, was probably 
added by himself ; and indeed, I cannot help thinking 
that his Pluto and Proserpina were the true progenitors 
of Oberon and Titania, or rather, that they themselves 
have, once at least, deigned to revisit our poetical sys- 
tem under the latter names.' 

Chaucer's tale has been retold by Pope under the title 
oi Jh^iuary and May} 

yflpThatever one may think of the merits of the Mer- 
khariCs Tale^ it will not do to dismiss it, as does a recent 
The Tale Writer on Chaucer, as a mere ' tale of harlotry ; ' 
Itself for the poet's chief interest in the story cen- 

tres not in its adulterous denouement^ but in the 
humorous character-sketch of old January. The doting 
gray-beard has spent his godless life in unbridled 
wantonness ; and now that he is sixty years and more, 
and the spark of desire is burning low, he decides that 
the comfort and happiness of his declining years, and 
incidentally the salvation of his soul, will be furthered 
by a tardy entrance into ' that holy bond with which that 
first God man and womman bond.' Only a young and 
beautiful wife will answer the purpose ; and with such 
a one old January foresees a life of unmixed bliss : — 

For wedlok is so esy and so clene, 
That in this world it is a paradys. 

The sage counsels of Justinus, who urges objections 
manifold, avail as much as good advice usually avails a 
man who is already decided : — 

For whan that he himself concluded hadde, 
Him thoughte ech other maunes wit so badde, 

^ For a comparison of Pope's version with the original, see the article 
by A. Schade, in Englische Studien, 25. 1-130, 26. 161-228. 



THE MERCHANT'S TALE 265 

That inpossible it were to replye 
Agayn his chois, this was his fantasye. 

The sycophant, Placebo, who is clever enough to argue 
on the popular side, bears away the palm for wisdom. 
Exceedingly delicate is the irony with which Chaucer 
manages this debate, and proclaims the unending hap- 
piness of the married state, while making it quite appar- 
ent all the while that for January the roseate vision is 
to be but mockery. So plausible is the sarcastic praise 
of marriage that the passage beginning : — 

For who can be so buxom as a wyf ? 
Who is so trewe, and eek so ententyf 
To kepe him, syk and hool, as is his make ? 

has actually been quoted, in all seriousness, to show 
Chaucer's ' perception of a sacred bond, spiritual and 
indestructible, in true marriage between man and 
woman ' ! ^ 

Foredoomed inevitably to failure, this senseless 
union of ' crabbed age and youth ' is rendered yet more 
absurd by the elaborate marriage-feast, which Chaucer, 
contrary to his usual custom, has described at length, 
but described with an irony all the more biting because 
of its apparent good faith : — 

Whan tendre youthe hath wedded stooping age, 
Ther is swich mirthe that it may nat be writen. 

When, in the sequel, the entirely natural happens, 
and ' faire f resshe May ' plays false with her marriage 
vows, she carries our sympathies with her. Not that 
we approve of her conduct exactly, but our attention is 
diverted from the merely lascivious in the tale, and from 
the moral questions involved, to the eminent poetic jus- 
tice of old January's cuckoldom. An immoral tale is 
made to subserve a sort of crude morality. 

1 The Prologue, KniqWs Tale, etc., edited by Richard Morris, Oxford, 
1895, p. xviii, and Morley, English Writers, 2. 135, 256, 286. 



266 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Even when the faithless wife occupies the centre of 
attention, it is the cleverness of her intrigue, and the 
sublime audacity of her inspired self- vindication, rather 
than her sensual desires which interest us ; while the deli- 
cate conceit of an overruling providence in the persons 
of Pluto and Proserpine, king and queen of faery, who 
sagely debate the wisdom of King Solomon and of Jesus 
films Syrah^ relieves the essential coarseness of the tale. 
Even in the realm of faery, a wife will have her way : 
Pluto may espouse the cause of the injured husband, 
but the queen knows a subtler magic than his own. 

It would have been easy, had Chaucer so wished, to 
give the tale a tragic ending ; but it is conceived from 
beginning to end in the spirit of a ' humor ' comedy of 
Ben Jonson. The tragedy is there, to be sure, but it is 
concealed so successfully from its victim that he ends 
his days, for aught we know, in the paradise of fools 
whose bliss is their ignorance. 

The MercliaiiCs Tale was written when Chaucer was 
at the height of his power, after he had already 
achieved one masterpiece of the same general character 
in the Wife of Bath's Prologue.^ Immoral the tale 
certainly is ; but its immorality is not insidious, and 
the spirit of broad comedy which pervades the piece is 
all but sufficient to sweeten the unwholesomeness of it. 

THE squire's tale 
When Milton in II Penseroso wished to summon 
up the memory of Chaucer, he did so by an allusion to 
the Squire's Tale: — 

Or call up him that left half-told 
The story of Cambuscan bold, 
Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 

* That the Merchant's Tale is later than the Wife of Bath's Prologue 
is shown by the direct allusion to the latter at line 1685. 



THE SQUIRE'S TALE 267 

And who had Canace to wife, 
That owned the virtuous ring and glass, 
And of the wondrous horse of brass 
On which the Tartar King did ride. 

Another of England's greater poets, the author of the 
Faerie Queejie, took upon himself the task of complet- 
ing the half -told story, after addressing ' Dan Chaucer ' 
in terms of deepest reverence and love.^ A lesser poet, 
Leigh Hunt, who made a modernization of the Squire's 
Tale, entertained the idea of writing a conclusion to it, 
but wisely refrained.^ The critic, Warton, placed the 
tale next after that of the Knight as ' written in the 
higher strain of poetry.' 

A considerable part of the attention which this tale 
has received is due, I fancy, to the very fact that it 
was left half told. I am inclined to suspect that Chau- 
cer abandoned the work because he did not know how 
to conclude it ; and if this is so, any attempt on our 
part to guess its conclusion must be futile. The Tar- 
tar King is provided with a wondrous horse of brass, on 
which he can fly ' as hye in the air as doth an egle,' 
and in the space of four and twenty hours arrive in 
whatsoever land he will. To his daughter, Canace, is 
given a magic ring, whose virtue is such that with it 
on her finger she shall understand the voices of all 
the birds of heaven and converse with them in their 
own tongue, and a mirror in which all the deeds of 
men are revealed as if face to face. There is a magic 
sword, too, which will pierce the strongest armor, and 
like Achilles' spear ' is able with the change to kill and 
cure.' In the second part, Canace, by virtue of her 

* Faerie Queene, Book 4, Cantos 2 and 3. 

^ See Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, 3. 211-212. One John Lane, a 
friend of Milton's father, produced in 1G30 a long continuation of the 
tale, which has been published by the Chaucer Society. It is miserable 
nonsense. 



268 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

ring, learns a tale of unhappy love from a falcon, who 
is, we must suppose, some princess laboring under an 
enchanter's spell. There are great wars toward. With 
such a beginning, what is not possible ? The imagina- 
tion roams through limitless fields of pleasing conjec- 
ture. The very name of magic has its fascination for 
our poor race of mortals, shut in as we are by the 
relentless barrier of the possible and the actual. Any 
conclusion which Chaucer, or any other poet, could 
have written would be barren and commonplace com- 
pared with our vague imaginings. And this is inevit- 
able in the very nature of the case. Let the magic 
horse, the ring, the sword, and mirror be put to practi- 
cal use, let their use result in any definite achievements 
or events, and they are immediately vulgarized. Once 
more the tyranny of the actual, if not the possible, 
shuts us in ; and the boundless scope of the imagina- 
tion is narrowed to nothing. An exactly similar case is 
presented by Coleridge's wonderful fragment, Kuhla 
Khan^ which deals, be it noticed, with the same Ori- 
ental dynasty as Chaucer's tale, Kubla Khan being a 
grandson of Gengis Khan, whose name becomes the 
Cambinskan of Chaucer. This poem is unfinished for 
the good reason that it could not be finished ; it is essen- 
tially a fragment ; and so great is Coleridge's art that 
the fragment may be said to constitute a distinct lit- 
erary form. Much might be said of the beauty of the 
incomplete, of the desirability of leaving things half 
finished. The beauty of a spring day is in large mea- 
sure the promise of summer days to come, which, when 
they come, fall often below our expectation. The un- 
equaled charm of a noble youth rests on the unlimited 
possibility of noble action which lies before him. The 
early death of Keats has served to magnify fourfold 
the estimate set upon his work. We have no proof 



THE SQUIRE'S TALE 269 

that he would ever have surpassed the actual achieve- 
ments he has left to us. Indeed, there are indications 
that he would not have done so. Yet such is the power 
of the incomplete, that we hear critics speak of him as 
one who might have been a second Shakespeare. Or, to 
take an example from what might have been, suppose 
that Milton had been cut off after he had completed 
only the first two books of Paradise Lost. What 
should we not have expected of the ten remaining 
books of a poem which opens so magnificently ? But 
we have the poem entire, and know that the level of 
the first two books was higher than Milton could con- 
sistently maintain. The more one considers the keen- 
ness of Chaucer's critical insight and the strange 
' elvishness' of his character, the more strongly one sus- 
pects that Chaucer recognized this power of the incom- 
plete, and deliberately left his tale half told. 

In no case has Chaucer more happily suited the tale to 
the character of the teller than in the case of the Squire. 
As the Knight, his father, tells a noble tale of tour- 
nament and knightly love, so his son, the Squire, turns 
naturally to a theme of chivalry. But there is a differ- 
ence. Warton says that ' the imagination of this story 
consists in Arabian fiction engrafted on Gothic chivalry.' 
It is in the days of our youth that the fiction of the Ara- 
bian Nights appeals most strongly to us. Before the 
' shadows of our prison house ' close about us, we are 
all impatient of the actual, and dream of the infinite 
possibilities that might follow on the impossible. The 
Knight has lived his life and worked his work, and so 
his story, however ideal in its spirit, is of things accom- 
plished, of deeds already done. The Squire, though 

He had been somtyme in chivachye, 
In Flaundres, in Artoys, and Picardye, 
And born him wel, as of so litel space, 



270 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

is living mainly in the infinite future, where all things 

are possible. All that his father has accomplished is 

as nothing beside what he intends to do. His charm, 

like that of the tale he tells, is in large measure the 

charm of incompleteness. 

There is hardly a feature of the Squire's Tale which 

does not find its parallel in the Oriental literature of 

magic. A reader whose acquaintance with this 
Sources. ,. ° . n ^ , -t a t • -\t- 7 

literature is confined to the Arabian JSights 

will find such parallels in abundance.^ But no single 
narrative which Chaucer might have used has yet been 
discovered. Whether any such narrative existed, or 
whether Chaucer merely allowed his imagination to play 
freely with the familiar themes of Arabian magic, fill- 
ing in his background with such scraps of knowledge 
about Tartary and the Far East as he had picked up in 
reading or conversation, we cannot say. The general 
character of the tale, and in particular its unfinished 
state, would favor the latter theory. 

Professor Skeat tried hard to prove that Chaucer's 
acquaintance with Gengis Khan, and with such features 
of local color as his story presents, was derived from 
the famous book of the travels of Marco Polo ; but this 
theory has been shown to be absolutely without foun- 
dation .^ Such are Chaucer's mistakes and confusions 
that it is hard to believe that he could have had any 
connected account of the Tartars before him.^ 

^ The whole subject has been investigated with great thoroughness 
by Mr. W. A. Clouston, in an article entitled On the Magical Elements in 
Chaucer''s Squire^s Tale, appended to the Chaucer Society's edition of 
John Lane's continuation of the Squire's Tale. 

^ J. M. Manley, ' Marco Polo and the Squire's Tale,' Publications of 
the Modern Language Association 0/ America, 11. 349-362. 

* Perhaps this is the best place to notice another exploded theory, 
that of Professor Brandl, who with characteristic German ingenuity 
has found in the Squire's Tale an elaborate allegory of the English 
court, Cainbinskan representing Edward III, and Canace his daughter- 



THE FRANKLIN'S TALE 271 

THE franklin's TALE 

The portrait of the Franklin in the General Prologue, 
though an atti-active one, hardly does full justice to this 
* worthy vavasour.' We are shown a prosperous coun- 
tr y land-holder, a ma n of sixty or over, we may suppose, 
wjf^ l^pnrd as white as the Jaisies~j whioh stud his spa- 
cious meadows, and with countenance as ruddy as the 
wine which Ties m his well-stocked cellar. It takes no 
extraordinary power of clairvoyance to know that his 
table must be loaded with ' alle deyntees that men coude 
thinke,' while the general kindliness and good-nature of 
his bearing tell us that there is always room at his board 
for another guest. We like the good man, and should 
be glad enough to receive an invitation to spend a week- 
end in a house where it ' snows meat and drink.' But 
we dismiss him from our thought as ' Epicurus owne 
sone ' for his good living, and as the Saint Julian of his 
country for generous hospitality. It is only after we 
have traveled a day or two with him on the Canterbury 
road, and heard him tell his noble tale, that we see more 
intimately into his life and aspirations. 
^The Franklin has much in common with the better 
type of the 'self-made man.' He has at his disposal all 
that money can buy, and he has held office in his own 
county ; but he is uncomfortably conscious of a certain 
lack of ' gentility,' — betrayed by his fondness for the 
words ' gentil ' and ' gentilesse,' — and of the full edu- 
cation which would adorn his prosperous estate. 

' But, sires, bycause I am a burel man, 
At my biginning first I yow biseche 
Have me excused of my rude speche ; 
I learued never rethoryk certeyn.' 

in-law Constance, second wife of John of Gaunt (Englische Studien, 
12. 161). This fanciful theory has been demolished by Professor Kit- 
tredge, in Englische Studien, 13. 1-25. 



272 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

That he has made up in some way or other for the lack 
of early advantages, is shown by the excellence of his 
tale, and by the more or less learned discussions which 
he rather needlessly introduces, such as the historical- 
mythological catalogue of women who died rather than 
sully their honor, which occupies lines 1366-1456. His 
enlightened views and sound good sense are shown in 
the opinion he expresses of astrology : — 
And swich folye, 
As in our dayes is nat worth a flye. 

Once he indulges in one of the figures of rhetoric of 

which he has professed his ignorance : — 
But sodeinly bigonne revel newe 
Til that the brighte sonue loste his hewe ; 
For th'orisonte hath reft the sonne his light ; 

but his good sense and native honesty bring him down 
to earth again in the line which follows : — 
This is as muche to seye as it was night. 
Conscious that, with all that he has acquired and at- 
tained, he can never be quite the complete gentleman, he 
would fain be the father of a gentleman ; but his hopes 
are disappointed by the unfortunate vulgar procliv- 
ities of his son and heir. To the gallant young squire he 
says : — 

' I have a sone, and, by the Trinitee, 
I hadde lever than twenty pound worth lond, 
Though it right now were fallen in myn hond, 
He were a man of swich discrecioun 
As that ye been ! fy on possessioun 
But-if a man be vertuous withal. 
I have my sone snibbed, and yet shal, 
For he to vertu listeth nat entende; 
But for to pleye at dees, and to despende, 
And lese al that he hath, is his usage. 
And he hath lever talken with a page 
Than to commune with any gentil wight 
Ther he mighte lerne gentillesse aright.' 



THE FRANKLIN'S TALE 273 

So might a Toledo oil-magnate bewail the vicious tend- 
encies of the son whom he is lavishly maintaining at 
Yale or Harvard. Considering this, there is something 
of pathos as well as fine generosity, in the enthusi- 
astic praise which the Franklin bestows on the Squire 
for his noble tale, which we, alas ! can never hear to its 
end: — 

' In feith, Squier, thou bast thee wel yquit, 
And geutilly; I preise wel thy wit.' 

This outburst of praise calls the Host's attention 
to the Franklin; and, though he disposes of the good 
man's most cherished aspiration with a contemptuous 
* straw for your gentillesse ! ' he nevertheless singles 
him out as the teller of the next tale. 

Were it not that in other instances we find Chaucer 
assigning a fanciful, rather than the actual, source for 
his compositions, the opening lines of the 
Franhlin' s Tale would seem sufficient evi- 
dence that its source was a courtly Breton lay, such as 
those that have come down to us in French dress from 
the hand of Marie de France. 

Thise olde gentil Britons in hir dayes 
Of diverse aventures maden layes, 
Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge; 
Which layes with hir instruments they songe, 
Or elles redden hem for hir plesaunce; 
And oon of hem have I in remembraunce, 
Which I shal seyn with good wil as I can. 

But no such lay has been preserved to us.^ Tales similar 

1 Dr. W. H. Schofield has attempted to prove from an account of a 
Briton chieftain, Arviragus, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, that 
such a legend actually existed in South Wales, whence it was carried 
to Brittany, and written up, perhaps with accretions from another source 
ultimately Oriental, by a poet of the school of Marie de France. (Publi- 
cations of the Modern Language Association of America, 16. 405-449.) 
The argument is ingenious, and one would be glad to accept it ; but it 
consists of hypotheses rather than of evidence. An elaborate refutation 



274 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

to that of the Franklin have been found in Sanskrit, Bur- 
mese, Persian, and other Oriental tongues ; and a still 
closer parallel is offered in a tale told by Boccaccio in his 
early prose work the Filocopo, and again, with slight va- 
riations, in the Decameron, Day 10, Nov. 5.^ In Boccac- 
cio's version, a faithful wife promises an importunate 
lover, of whom she wishes to be rid, that she will give 
him her love, if he can make a garden bloom and bear 
fruit in mid-January. The lover accomplishes this by 
the help of a magician ; and the story concludes as does 
the Franklin's. Of the two parallel tales of Boccaccio, 
that in the Filocopo is somewhat nearer to Chaucer's; 
and it is possible that Chaucer may have drawn his 
material thence, changing the scene to Brittany, alter- 
ing the names in accordance with this change, and con- 
siderably modifying the story itself ; but it is more 
probable that his source was a Yvench. fabliau, closely 
related to the source whence Boccaccio's tale was drawn. 
The fact that the scene was laid in Brittany would be 
sufficient to explain the fanciful attribution to a Breton 
lai. The history of the tale, as it traveled from the dis- 
tant east to Chaucer's study, was probably similar to 
that of the story which we have in the Pardoner's 
Tale? It is interesting to notice that Beaumont and 
Fletcher have utilized the plot of the FranklirH s Tale 
for a one-act play entitled The Triumph of Honour. 
/ The chief beauty of this tale resides in the noble 

of Dr. Schofield's contention is given by P. Rajna in Romania, 32. 204- 
267. (' Le Origini della Novella narrata dal Frankeleyn nei Canterbury 
Tales del Chaucer.') 

1 The story also appears in the twelfth canto of Boiardo's Orlando 
Innamorato. See Originals and Analogues to Some of Chaucer'' s Canterbury 
Tales, pp. 289-340, where several Oriental versions and the Decameron 
novella are given in translation. For the relation of Chaucer's version 
to Boccaccio's, see the article by P. Rajna, in Romania, 32, 204-267. 
Rajna's conclusions in this matter the present writer cannot accept. 

2 Cf. above, p. 224. 



THE FRANKLIN'S TALE 275 

spirit whicli pervades it. The unswerving fidelity of 
Dorigen, who cannot make merry when her husband is 
overseas, and who unhesitatingly rejects the literary 
advances of her lover Aurelius ; the utmost Qualities. 
lo3'alty to the spoken pledge, which impels Arviragus 
to send his wife to keep a promise, though spoken in 
jest — are so potent in their power for good that not 
only the passionate lover, but the poor scholar in far- 
off Orleans, are compelled to an equal nobility. Ten 
Brink says of the poem : ' The contagious influence of 
good, proceeding from a common as well as from a 
noble disposition, and the wondrous power of love, are 
beautifully symbolized in this fable. And throughout 
all his story Chaucer gives special prominence to the 
idea by which the whole receives its internal comple- 
tion, viz., the idea that love and force mutually exclude 
each other, while patience and forbearance belong to 
the very essence of love.'^ 

Beautiful as is this picture of married love, Chaucer 
has taken care that it shall not become sentimental, by 
touching it here and there with his own peculiar humor. 
Thus with sly ambiguity he asks, after describing the 
bliss of Arviragus and Dorigen, — 

Who coude telle, but he had wedded be, 
The joye, the ese, and the prosperitee 
That is betwixe an housbonde and his wyf ? 

And again in describing the grief of Dorigen at her 
husband's departure for Britain : — 

For his absence wepeth she and syketh. 
As doon thise noble wyves whan hem lyketh. 

After giving us the passionate ' complaint ' uttered by 
Aurelius in his love-longing, there is on the author's 
part a playful assurance of his own unconcern : — 

* History of English Literature (English trans.), 2. 169. 



276 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Dispeyred in this torment and this thoght 

Lete I this woful creature lye ; 

Chese he, for me, whether he wol live or dye. 

The poem ends in the manner of the debat literature 
so popular in mediaeval France, with a question addressed 
to the judicious reader, or rather to the members of the 
pilgrimage : — 

Lordinges, this question wolde I aske now, 
Which was the moste free, as thinketh yow? 

Which of the three — Arviragus, who sacrifices his wife 
to his sense of honor, Aurelius, who foregoes his coveted 
opportunity, or the clerk of Orleans, who in remitting his 
promised fee, showed that he too ' coude doou a gentil 
dede ' — shows the greatest freedom, i. e., generosity ? 
One would be glad to hear the discussion which must have 
arisen among the company when this question was pro- 
pounded ; but one of the several gaps in the unfinished 
framework of the Canterbury Tales follows the Frank- 
lin's Tale, and the reader is left to imagine the debate, 
and to settle the burning question by himself. In at- 
tempting the question, one must decide whether or not 
the terrible sacrifice of Arviragus was necessary, or even 
justifiable. Probably most modern readers will decide 
that it was neither. A jesting promise is made on con- 
dition that the seemingly impossible be performed. By 
calling in the aid of magic, the condition is fulfilled. 
Surely it is a hyperquixotic sense of honor which shall 
insist on the fulfillment of a pledge so circumstanced. 
But the Middle Age apparently admired such extreme 
conceptions of honor, ^ and I, for one, am not willing 
to say that they were wrong. It would not hurt our 
modern world to be a little more quixotic in its sense 
of honor. I am quite ready to grant that in this in- 

* Cf. The tale of Nathan and Mithridanes, in Boccaccio's Decam- 
eron, Day 10, Nov. 3. 



THE SECOND NUN'S TALE 277 

stance Arviragus was mistaken, that truth did not de- 
mand the sacrifice ; even, if you will, that the sacrifice 
should not have been made; and yet his act is none the 
less a noble act. I cannot see that its spirit is very 
different from the spirit of the equally quixotic com- 
mand, ' If any man will sue thee at the law, and take 
away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.' In the 
event, at least, Arviragus is justified ; his noble deed 
begets nobility in others ; and we are shown once more 
that it is indeed possible to overcome evil with good. 

THE SECOND NUN's TALE 

Of the Second^ Nun, to whom the manuscript rubrics 
assign the legend of St. Cecilia, we know nothing be- 
yond the mere fact of her presence in the pilgrim-com- 
pany a s attend a nt on the^ r^megs. At the end of the 
description of Madam Eglantine in the General Pro- 
logue we read : — 

Another Nonne with hir hadde she, 
That was hir chapeleyne. 

Chaucer has provided no introductory prologue to the 
tale itself to inform us further of the good lady's per- 
sonality, nor of the circumstance of her narration. The 
appropriateness of tale to teller is, however, obvious 
at a glance. Like the tale of the Prioress, the story 

bronthpR thnt .spirit of peculiar religious exaltation 

wlnVh wp assQ cia,t«- with a l L4haLia_most_ beaut iful in the 
rnonastic_life. 

That the l e^ejnd^of .St^X!£ciIia was not orig inally in- 
tended for its present place as o ne of the ^JJunierhury 
"jTo/es might be shown from the internal evi- Date of 
deHcj ^f thr tale itself. In open contradic- composition. 
tiofTto^ the ideaTof oral narration on the pilgrimage is 
line 78 : — 

Yet preye I yow that reden that I wryte. 



278 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

Equally inconsistent is line 62, in which the speaker 
refers to herself as ' unworthy sone of Eve.' We have, 
however, a piece of external evidence on the question 
which is even more convincing. In the Legend of 
Good Women Dan Cupid says of the poet : — 

He hath in prose translated Boece, 
And mad the Lyf also of seynt Cecyle. 

This evidence taken together may be held to prove 
that the tale was written before 1385, and was not 
revised for its present position. 

That the legend was written after Chaucer's Italian 
journey of 1373 is rendered probable by the fact that 
lines 36-51 are translated from the last canto of Dante's 
Paradiso. From its general stylistic qualities, and in 
particular from the closeness with which it follows its 
original, critics have been inclined to ascribe it, with 
Ten Brink, to the very beginning of Chaucer's so-called 
Italian period, that is, to the years 1373-74. Proba- 
bility favors this ascription ; but it must be remem- 
bered that we have no positive evidence in its support.^ 

The source of the Second JVwn's Tale is suggested 
by the rubric which precedes line 85 : Interpretacio 
nominis Cecilie, quani jyonit frater lacohus 
lanuensis in Legenda Aurea. This Jacobus 
Januensis, better known as Jacobus a Voragine, was a 
Dominican friar, who in 1292 was consecrated arch- 
bishop of Genoa ; and his Golden Legend^ ' a collec- 
tion of the legendaiy lives of the greater saints of the 
mediaeval church,' was one of the most popular books 
of the Middle Ages. Professor Koelbing has shown, 
however, that Chaucer's original was a Latin life of 
St. Cecilia, which, though closely related to that in the 
Golden Legend, is in some particulars nearer to the 

^ Dr. Koeppel, in Anglia, 14. 227-233, faTors a date later than that 
of Troilus and Criseyde. 



THE SECOND NUN'S TALE 279 

life of the saint written by Simeon Metaphrastes,^ 
printed in a collection of saints' lives by Aloysius 
Lipomanus, Louvain, 1571. There is no .proof that 
Chaucer used the French translation of the Golden 
Legend by Jehan de Vignay, nor any of the earlier 
English accounts of St. Cecilia.^ 

Though we do not possess Chaucer's exact original, 
we know from the extant Latin versions, from which it 
probably differed only in minute details, that his trans- 
lation is exceedingly literal. The following extract 
from the version of Metaphrastes may be compared with 
Chaucer's corresponding lines : ' Dixit Almacius prge- 
fectus: Elige tu unum ex duobus, aut sacrifica aut 
nega te esse cristianam, ut delicti tibi detur venia. 
Tunc dixit ridens sancta Csecilia : O judicem pudore 
necessario affectum ! Vidt me negare et esse me inno- 
centem, ut ipse me faciat crimini obnoxiam.' ^ 

In Chaucer's English this becomes : — 

Almache answerde, ' chees oou of thise two, 
Do sacrifyce, or Cristeudom reueye, 
That thou mowe now escapen by that weye.* 
At which the holy blisful fayre niayde 
Gan for to laughe, and to the juge seyde, 
* O juge, conf us in thy nycetee, 
Woltow that I reneye innocence, 
To make me a wikked wight ? ' quod she. 

This passage is typical of Chaucer's procedure through- 
out, so that we may agree with Professor Koelbing's 
assertion that ' apart from the charming versification, 
which seems splendidly suited to the subject, Chaucer's 
proprietorship in the composition consists only in single 
words or half lines, which he used to fill out his verse.' 
Any criticism of the tale, then, must be a criticism of 

1 Englische Studien, 1. 215-248. 

* See Originals and Analogues, pp. 189-219. 

' From Koelbing's article cited above, p. 223. 



280 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

the original saint's legend rather than of Chaucer. It_ 
isa story of^ ^typp to whicli^-om^ -modern world is 
The Tale iijclinedto do small justice. Full as it js of 
Itself. tl;s_aapernatural aad-t he im p os3ibl %4tUends. 

itself readil y enough to Jhe Iai igh_of__thft mncfegr ; 
while even the human moti_ves pf the saintly heroine 
are far^o^_the_coniprehension of to-day. Yet for its 
p athos, it s noble spirit of high religion, above all for 
tne irresistible force of Cecilia's sweet personality, the 
€irie~may still be read and loved by all whose Jiearts are 
not~completely hardened. Chaucer, apparently, took 
tne tale quite seriously ; the genuineness of its religious 
feeling cannot be questioned. So that his deliberate 
cilice of theme, not in the first place for the Second 
Nun, but for himself, is a valuable piece of testimony 
asTo his deeper and more serious life. 

Of the historical Cecilia little is known beyond what 
can be inferred from the developed legend. Her mar- 
tyrdom is usually assigned to the reign of the Emperor 
Alexander Severus (a. d. 222-235) ; but even this is 
not certain. St. Cecilia's present fame as patroness of 
music and inventor of the organ is a later develop- 
ment, of which Chaucer probably never heard. The 
Cecilia of the legend sang to God in her heart ' whyl 
the organs maden melodye,' and she received an angel 
visitant ; but the two facts are unconnected, and the 
mention of the organ is only a passing one. 

THE canon's yeoman's TALE 

When the Second Nun has finished her tale of St. 
Cecilia, and the company have reached the little village 
of Boghton under Blee, they are joined by two new- 
^mers, the^finon anrl hi)i_Yepman, whicHEave ridden 
f ufiCnisTyJ;a.ovei:take^haui, fearing perhaps to travel 
alone through jhe robhet^haunted Forest of Blean. 



THE CANON'S YEOIilAN'S TALE 281 

silen ce is more than atoned for li y the, garriilnus. lo- 
quacity of hi s Yeoman. Li ttle by lij ji]^ it tmnspirps 
tT iatthe Canon is a practicer of alc hemy. T he Yeom an 
wi ll not ]jQ silenced : — 

And whan this chanon saugh it wolde nat be, 

But his yeman wolde telle his privetee, 

He fledde awey for verray sorwe aud shame. 

Chaucer had little, if any, of the reformer's spirit 
in his make-up ; but with his temperamental tendency 
to see the comic in human life, he had a keen interest 
in hypocrisy and clever imposture, an interest which 
at times almost extends to an intellectual admiration. 
With lively intellectual interest, but with no trace of 
bitterness, he shows up the lying devices of his Par- 
doner. With less detail, but with rich humor, Clerk 
Nicholas in the ^filler's Tale is made to exemplify the 
tricks of the false astrologer. T^e^CxmrmV j^omtaw's 
TjT^gJs a complete. ^a^jiQ^ -of alchemy made by one of 
its victims, and consequently made with a personal bit- . 
terness that has led many critics to the unwarranted 
supposition that Chaucer himself had fallen prey to the 
imjiosture. C hauceFm ayJiage- beliove d^-ft»-tlidralL-the 
mos t lear ned of his time, in the theoretical possibility 
of^transumtlng the baser metals into gold. The fullness 
and accuracy of his acquaintance with the subject, as 
shown in the tale itself, prove that his intellectual 
curiosity had led him to explore the mysteries of the 
science. Even the Canori's Yeoman's Tale itself in- 
dicates no active disbelief in the theory of alchemy. 
But his sound common sense told him that in actual 
experience the search for the philosopher's stone had 
been but a pursuit of will-o'-the-wisp, when it had not 
been downright fraud and imposture. We can be sure, 
I think, that the only use Chaucer made of alchemy was 



282 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

in transmuting the base metal of human greed and folly 
into the finer gold of humor. The bitterness of the 
Canon s Yeoman^ s Tale is the dramatic indignation 
of the Yeoman, who at last discovers that he has been 
made a gull. Needless to say, it gives the highest real- 
ism and color to the tale. 

When his master takes to flight, and the Yeoman 
finds himself free of the incubus that has for seven long 
years possessed him, robbing him of money and of 
health, his pent-up scorn finds vent in a long rambling 
exposition of alchemical mysteries. He has learned his 
lesson well ; and the ' terms ' of the ' elvish craft,' ' so 
clergial and so queynte,' flow freely from his loosened 
tongue. There is no order in his speech ; and the 
majority of his terms are, of course, meaningless to 
us. The total effect is one of bewildering confusion, 
precisely the effect which Chaucer wished to produce. 
Deliciously humorous is his description of the sudden 
bursting of the pot which contained the mixture which 
was to bring great wealth. Some said this, and some 
said that, but the bitter fact remained that months of 
labor had gone for nothing. 

^ The first par t_of_the-tal& d e al s wi th- the futile at- 
tjeiupts of serious alchemy, in which the deceivers are 
themselves deceived, and all alike share in the common 
failure. The second part, which is the more interest- 
ing, tells of the clever trick of legerdemain by which 
another canon, less-scrupulous than the one we have 
met, convinces a gullible priest that he actually pos- 
se§ses_the_elixir, and disposes of his worthless receipt 
for_theconsid^ra61eIsiini^^^ 

No source for the tale is known, and probably none 
is to be sought. Very likely the anecdote of the second 
part is founded on an actual occurrence. A triek closely 
similar to this was actually perpetrated in New York 



THE MANCIPLE'S TALE 283 

in the summer of 1890.* After all, the chief interest 
of the tale lies not so much in its substance as in the 
personality of the Yeoman who relates it. 

THE manciple's TALE 

The journey to Canterbury is nearly ended, a^ 
already the company is in sight of a little town, — * 

Which that ycleped is Bob-up-and-doun, 
Under the Blee, in Caunterbury weye. 

Meanwhile honest Hodge of Ware, the Cook of Lon- 
don, has been taking advantage of his vacation days to 
sample the wine or ale of every wayside tavern, until he 
has got himself (^^jg^aJSfifulI^Lduink. He talks through 
his nose, breathes heavily, and finally falls from his 
horse into the mire, whence he is raised into the saddle 
again only after much shoving and lifting. Obviously, 
he is in no condition to tell the tale which mine Host 
demands of him ; so that the Manciple's ready offer to 
serve in h i s stead is gladly accepted . On the first day 
H ^^ pil tyT-i mage, it will be remembered, the Co okjiad 
)een called on for a tale, and had responded_witli-the 
S tory ot ir^erkin ICevelmir, whinli Clinnoftj-^Jeft^nfin- 
ished after the fifty-ei2[hthL_line. That he should be 



(ft,il6d on a second tiig f is pTr>nf fViaf^ wTiPn flip Man. 
m )le's Prologue was written. Chaucer had jiot-^Iian- 
doned his origi nal plan, ag Lflr'"""^^'^^ ^^ ^h^ rrp.pftral 
Tr6l6gue, that ^aeh of the pilgrims should tell tivo 
tales on the road to Canterbury, and other two on the 
journey home. 

The tale which the Manciple tells is a short and sim- 
ple one, and needs no long exposition here. It is merely 

^ See Dr. C. M. Hathaway's edition of Ben Jonson's Alchemist, New 
York, 1903, pp. 87, 88. The introduction of this volume contains an 
interesting history of alchemy, its theory and practice, down to the 
present day. 



284 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

a clever retellipg of t.Vip fqV>1p of Apf^]|n pn^ rifiT^Tiiff 
i n Ovicrs 3fetamor2)hos£ S^,-2^-^^^l'Ja^2u.__ChmiceT Jias 
somewhat simplified the tale, an d has added some mora l 
reflections jin-tli e futility of trymg to restrain_ a,j;dfe, 
and onthe undesir ability of repeating ^scamlalT-the4atter 
t!fcen from Aibertano^ of Brescia's treatise on the Art 
qf^^eaking and of Keeping Silence} The same tale is 
told by Gower in Confessio Amantis, 3. 783-830. Mr. 
Clouston has shown ^ that the tale is ultimately of Ori- 
ental origin, and that a version of the story, independent 
of that given by Ovid, was brought to Europe in the 
MMdle Ages, and incorporated into the popular collec- 
tion of tales entitled Z/i JRomans des Se2)t Sages. But 
Chaucer's tale was probably drawn directly from Ovid, 
and certainly has no connection with this version last 
named. 

THE parson's tale 

In the life of the fourteenth century the Church 
played, for good and for evil, a part of the first impor- 
tance, so that one need not be surjjrised that of tlil 
nine and twenty gathered together at the inn in Soutl# 
wark, eleven are connected in one way or another with 
the ecclesiastical organization. Surveying this delega- 
tion as a whole, one is forced to the conclusion th^ 
the English Church had fallen on evil days ; and tlflls 
conclusion is strengthened by the appearance of oth# 
churchmen quite as unworthy as these in the talq» 
themselves. Unfortunately, the concurrent testimony 
of such diverse observers as Gower, Langland, and 
Wiclif proves that Chaucer's picture is not overdrawn. 
Against such a background of corruption and unwor- 
thiness, the poor parson of a town stands out with singu- 
lar beauty, and the sympathetic portrait of him given 

1 See the article by Koeppel, in Herrig's Arckiv, SG. 44. 
* Originals and Analogues, 437-480. 



THE PARSON'S TALE 285 

iu._ the General FrQ logue— is justly regarded as o ne of 
the loyeliestJbitS-o£-C h a uo o r' s- poetry. 

Often enough on the road to Canterbury the good 
priest must have been shocked by the words he had 
to hear ; but he knew how to keep his peace. He 
' ne maked him a spyced conscience.' Only once does 
he protest, when on the second day of the journey the 
Host turns to him and with an oath demands a tale. 
The Parson's mild rebuke calls forth from the Host a 
scornful answer : — 

' I smelle a loller in the wind,' quod he. 

' How ! good men,' quod our hoste, 'herkneth me; 

Abydeth for goddes digne passioun, 

For we shall han a predicacioun; 

This loller heer wil prechen us somwhat.' 

But the Shipman, that stout defender of the estab- 
lished faith, throws himself into the breach ; the dan- 
ger of a ' predicacioun ' is for the present averted ; and 
the unpleasantness blows over. Not, however, till all the 
other pilgrims have told their tales, late in the after- 
noon of the last day's ride, does the Host again make 
requisition for the Parson's tale. This time the Par- 
son suffers his profanity to pass without rebuke. The 
Host's earlier fears of a ' predicacioun,' however, are 
fully realized. The Parson will tell no fable, either in 
rime or alliteration; his tale is to be ' moralitee and 
vertuous matere,' 

To shewe yow the wey, in this viage. 
Of thilke parfit glorious pilgrimage 
That highte Jerusalem celestial. 

The whole company sees the appropriatness of ending 
' in som vertuous sentence,' and the Parson is given 
free audience. 

Much as we may admire the beauty of the Parson's 
character as parish priest, we are heartily glad that we 



286 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

do not have to sit under his preaching of a Sunday. His 
sermon, or meditation, as he calls it, is interminably- 
long, and for our modern taste at least, intolerably dull. 
It is full of excellent teaching, often expressed in tren- 
chant language ; but for effectiveness as a whole, it is 
immeasurably inferior to the brilliant sermon of the 
miserable Pardoner. T he theme of the discourse is Pe ni- 
ij pno.p.; but into its midst is introduce ^ ^ rligrpggir>r| on 
tlir xyrn fknrllj Rins anjthpir remediea^ioBgeg-jh^n 
a]^l the rest of the sermon, which hopeles^^_destroys 
theunit Y~and _BJ:Qpo ftion of~th o-whole. 

the source of the Parson'' s Tale Professor Skeat 
says : ^ 'It is now known that this Tale is little else 
Sources than an adaptation (with alterations, omis- 
Authen- sions, and additions, as usual with Chaucer) 
ticity. of a French treatise by Frere Lorens, entitled 

La Somme des Vices et des Vertus, written in 1279.' ^ 
Until quite recently this statement was universally ac- 
cepted ; but we now know that the JParsori's Tale and 
Z/a Somme des Vices et des Vertus both go back to an 
earlier common original, the Summa seu Tractatus de 
Viciis of Guilielmus Peraldus, a Dominican Friar of 
the thirteenth century, while the main body of the tale 
which deals with penitence is from the Summa Casuu7n 
Poenitentioi of another Dominican of the same century, 
Raymund of Pennaforte.^ In just what versions these 
treatises reached Chaucer we do not yet know ; but, 

1 Oxford Chaucer, 3. 502. 

^ Id the Chaucer Society's volume of Essays on Chaucer, pp. 503- 
610, may be found a minute comparison of the Parson's Tale and the 
Somme, by W. Eilers. 

^ The Sources of the Parson''s Tale, by Miss Kate 0. Petersen, Rad- 
clifFe College Monosraphs, 12. Boston, 1901. Favorably reviewed by 
E. Koeppel, in Englische Studien, 30. 464-467. Professor Liddell's ' A 
New Source of the Parson's Tale,' in the Furnivall Miscellany, 255-277, 
is no longer important. 



THE PARSON'S TALE 287 

though the Somme of Frere Lorens may have been 
consulted, it cannot have been his direct or even indi- 
rect source. Nor do we know whether the unfortunate 
piecing together of two distinct treatises is due to 
Chaucer, or to his immediate original. 

So inartistic is this combination, that many critics, 
among them Ten Brink, have been unwilling to believe 
that the tale as preserved to us is Chaucer's authentic 
work. The whole digression on the seven deadly sins, 
and other lesser sections of the work, they regard as 
interpolations by another hand. But this method of 
higher criticism, by which everything offensive to the 
aesthetic taste of the critic is conveniently branded as 
interpolation, is fortunately going out of fashion ; and 
in this particular case there is no adequate ground for 
supposing that the tale is not in all essentials as Chau- 
cer wrote it.^ 

It will be remembered that the Host accused the 
Parson of being a ' loller,' i. e. a lollard, a follower of 
Wiclif . Superficially, the portrait of the Parson in the 
General Prologue suggests the ' poor preachers ' who 
spread the reformer's teachings through the country- 
side ; and a serious attempt has been made to prove 
that he was intended as a Wiclifite, and that Chaucer 
himself was in sympathy with the movement. Of course 
the Parson's ' meditation,' with its insistence on the 
necessity of auricular confession, is eminently orthodox ; 
and if we accept it as genuine, we must at once dis- 
miss the theory of his Wiclifite sympathies. Apart 
from this objection, the theory never had any adequate 
evidence in its favor. As for the Host's playful charge, 
one may readily enough answer that it is quite in 

^ Profesaer Koeppel, in Herrig's Archiv, 87. 33-54, has shown that 
many quotations from the section on the seven deadly sins occur in 
Chaucer's other works, just as we find similar quotations from Boe- 
thiuB and from the Tale of Melibeus. 



288 THE POETRY OF CHAUCER 

accord with Chaucer's characteristic humor to have it 
suggested that the one thoroughly worthy ecclesiastic 
in the company is a heretic.^ 

In the last paragraph of the Parson^ s Tale^ under 
the caption ' Here taketh the ma^ -.e of this book his 
The Ee- leve,' is found a strange and sad leave-taking, 
tractation. jjj which the poct bcseechcs ' mekely for the 
mercy of god, that ye preye for me, that Crist have 
mercy on me and foryeve me my giltes : — and namely, 
of my translacions and endytinges of worldly vanitees, 
the whiche I revoke in my retracciouns : as is the book 
of Troilus ; The book also of Fame ; The book of the 
nynetene Ladies ; The book of the Duchesse ; The 
book of seint Valentynes day of the Pai-lement of 
Briddes ; The tales of Caunterbury, thilke that sounen 
into sinne.' The only works that he does not regret 
are the translation of Boethius, 'and other bokes of 
Legendes of seintes, and omelies, and moralitee, and 
devocioun.' All for which we prize Chaucer he would 
rather not have writ ! We should be glad to believe 
that these words are not authentic ; but, remembering 
Tolstoi and Ruskin, we dare not. The sincerity of the 
passage cannot be questioned. We must believe that 
in the sadness of his latter days the poet's conscience 
was seized upon by the tenets of a narrow creed, which 
in the days of his strength he had known how to trans- 
mute into something better and truer. But into the 
sacredness of his soul we had better not pry too curi- 
ously, 

' So here is ended the book of the Tales of Caunter- 
bury, compiled by Geffrey Chaucer, of whos soule Jesu 
Crist have mercy. Amen.' 

^ Those who wish to pursue this Wiclifite theory may read the essay 
on ' Chaucer a Wicliffite,' in Essays on Chaucer, 227-292, by H. Simon. 



APPENDIX 



A FEW SUGGESTIONS AS TO THE 
STUDY OF CHAUCER 

The first question that presents itself to the student of 
Chaucer is that of editions of the poet's works ; and, un- 
fortunately, no thoroughly satisfactory edition as yet exists. 
Those who can afford it will procure Skeat's edition in six 
volumes,^ commonly known as the Oxford Chaucer, which, 
though seriously deficient in scientific method, contains in 
notes and introductions a vast store of valuable information. 
School editions of various portions of Chaucer's works are 
numerous, and from Morris and Skeat's edition of The Pro- 
logue, The Kniffht's Tale, and The Nun's Priest's Tale, 
(Clarendon Press), or from the similar editions of Liddell 
(MacmiUan) and Mather (Houghton, Mifflin and Co.), the 
student may get a good introduction to the subject. Most 
readers, however, will choose either The Student's Chaucer, 
edited by Skeat (Clarendon Press, 1900), or the Globe Edi- 
tion, edited by Pollard, Heath, Liddell, and McCormick 
(Macmillan, 1903). Each of these editions has its own ad- 
vantages ; but the present writer is inclined to prefer the for- 
mer. The older editions of Chaucer's works are to be avoided. 
For the study of Chaucer's language and verse the stand- 
ard work is Ten Brink's The Language and Metre of Chau- 
cer, originally written in German, of which an English trans- 
lation is published by Macmillan (1902). The best existing 
glossary is that in the Oxford Chaucer ; but, under the aus- 
pices of the Carnegie Institution, Professor FlUgel of the 
University of California is now engaged on a Chaucer lexicon 
which wiU certainly supersede it. No concordance to Chaucer 
exists, the nearest approach to one being the rime-indexes 
published by the Chaucer Society. 

1 A seventh volume contains all the pieces which have in the past 
been erroneously included among Chaucer's works. 



292 APPENDIX 

For the life of Chaucer, about which we know very little 
that is significant, the biographies given in any of the recent 
editions will serve, or the article by J. AV. Hales in the 
Dictionary of National Biography may be consulted. The 
fullest presentation of the little we know is given in Life 
Records of Chaucer (Chaucer Society, 1900). 

In the field of literary scholarship Lounsbury's three vol- 
umes of Studies in Chaucer (Harpers, 1892) is the most 
important single work. It is written in a diffuse but charm- 
ing style, and though colored largely by the author's idiosyn- 
crasies, contains a great deal that is of permanent value. 
Very suggestive are the pages devoted to Chaucer in Ten 
Brink's History of English Literature, vol. ii, Part I (Eng- 
lish translation published by Henry Holt and Co., 1893). 
Less valuable is Ward's volume in the ' English Men of 
Letters Series' (Macmillan). Wider in its scope and more 
recent, but not very satisfactory, is Snell's The Age of Chaur 
cer (Bell, 1901). 

The great mass of Chaucerian scholarship is contained in 
the voluminous publications of the Chaucer Society, and in 
the various scholarly journals, English, German, and Ameri- 
can. No complete bibliography of Chaucer has yet appeared 
to make this accessible. It is to make the results of this 
scholarship readily available to the student and general reader 
that the present volume has been undertaken. With this 
volume and with The Student's Chaucer, the reader will 
have in his possession all that is really essential to an under- 
standing and appreciation of Chaucer's work. Let me sug- 
gest that before beginning to read, he acquaint himself with 
the elements of Chaucer's pronunciation, as given in Skeat's 
introduction. The acquisition of an approximately correct 
pronunciation is not at all difficult, and adds inestimably to 
one's appreciation of the music of Chaucer's verse. For 
practical purposes, it will be wise to disregard the distinction 
between the ' open ' and ' close ' values of e and o. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



A. B. a, 57, 58, 207. 
Against Women Unconstant, 78. 
Alanus de Insulis, 66, 127. 
Albertano of Brescia, 203, 284. 
Alchemy, 23, 25, 281-283. 
Alma Redemptoris, 198. 
Alphonsus of Lincoln, 194-196. 
Amorous Complaint, 79. 
Anelida and Arcite,QS, 69, 168. 
Arabian Nights, 151, 269, 270. 
Astrolabe, 23, 85, 86. 
Astrology, Chaucer's attitude 

towards, 22, 24. 
A.stronomy, Chaucer's interest 

in, 22. 

Balade of Complaint, 79. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 274. 

Benoit de Sainte-More, 96, 97, 
99, 101. 

Beowulf, 80. 

Beryn,'Tale of, 158, 159. 

Boccaccio, 17, 18, 20, 21, 32, 65, 
68, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 
111, 120, 127, 136, 137, 152, 
163, 175, 188, 205, 207, 228, 
243, 254, 255, 263, 274. 

Boethius, 17, 19, 46, 70, 71, 73, 
74, 75, 80-85, 91, 133, 207. 

Book of the Duchess, 15, 37, 38, 
58, 59-63, 66, 68. 

Bukton, 76, 77. 

Canon's Yeoman's Tale, 23, 280- 
283. )\ 



Canterbury Tales, 18, 135, 151- 
160. 

Cento Novelle Antiche, 225-227. 

Christianity, Chaucer's attitude 
towards, 26. 

Chronology of Chaucer's writ- 
ings, 15-19. 

Cicero, 65, 127. 

Claudian, 65. 

Clerk's Tale, 37, 148, 253-262. 

Clifford, Sir Lewis, 138. 

Coleridge, 268. 

Complaint of Mars, 63, 77. 

Complaint of Venus, 77. 

Complaint to his Empty Purse, 78. 

Complaint to his Lady, 68. 

Complaint to Pity, 58, 59. 

Cook's Tale, 179, 180. 

'Corinne,' 68,69. 

Criseyde, 98, 99, 102, 104, 105- 
115, 187. 

Dante, 3, 4, 17, 35, 65, 68, 126, 

127, 207, 243, 278. 
Dares Phrygius, 95, 96, 97, 99. 
Decameron, 152, 175, 188, 228, 

254, 263, 274. 
Deschamps, 138, 139, 141. 
Dictys Cretensis, 94, 95, 97, 98. 
Dramatic power of Chaucer, 

38, 88-90. 
Drydeu, 173. 

Envoy to Bukton, 76, 77. 
Envoy to Scogan, 75, 76. 



296 



INDEX 



Faerie Queene, 35, 207. 

Filostrato, 98, 101, 103. 

Fletcher, 172, 173, 274. 

Florus, 136. 

Former Age, 38, 70, 71. 

Fortune, 71. 

Franklin's Tale, 24, 42, 148, 

271-277. 
Friar, 48. 

Friar's Tale, 244-249. 
Froissart, 64, 76, 138, 139. 

Gautier de Coincy, 194. 
Gentilesse, 25, 38, 74, 243. 
Golden Legend, 278. 
Gower, 11, 13, 26, 33, 137, 151, 

183, 184, 240, 284. 
Graunsoun, Otes de, 77. 
Groups of Canterbury Tales, 

152-154. 
Guide delle Colonne, 98, 137, 

207. 
Guilielmus Peraldus, 286. 
Guillaume de Deguilleville, 57. 
Guillaume de Lorris, 16, 45- 

50. 
Guillaume de Macliault, 60, 61, 

78, 138. 

Herolt, John, 246, 247. 

Homer, 93, 95, 98. 

House of Fame, 18, 23, 30, 37, 

123-134, 140. 
Hugh of Lincoln, 193. 
Humor of Chaucer, 39. 
Hunt, Leigh, 267. 
Hygiuus, 137. 

Jacobus a Voragine, 278. 
Jakes de Basiu, 250. 
Jean de Meun, 16, 20, 46-50, 
81, 84, 220, 232. 



Jerome, St., 232. 
Jews, medifeval attitude to- 
wards, 191-194. 
John of Gaunt, 59, 63. 

Keats, 268, 269. 

Kipling, 225. 

Knight's Tale, 23, 24, 27, 36, 

37, 39, 42, 66, 69, 150, 163- 

173, 269. 

Lack of Steadfastness, 74, 75. 
Langland, 11, 12, 26, 163. 
Legenda Aurea, 278. 
Legend of Cleopatra, 150. 
Legend of Dido, 25, 150. 
Legend of Good Women, 18, 26, 

34, 135-150, 151, 182, 219. 
Legend of Thisbe, 150. 
Livy, 137, 220. 
Lorens, Fr^re, 286, 287. 
Lowell, 37, 62, 251. 
Lydgate, 141, 206. 

Machault, 60, 61, 78, 138. 

Macrobius, 65, 127. 

Manciple's Tale, 283, 284. 

Man of Lato's Tale, 38, 148, 
181-187, 238. 

Marco Polo, 270. 

Marie de France, 210, 273. 

Martianus Capella, 127. 

Massuccio di Salerno, 174. 

Medisevalism and the Renais- 
sance, 3-7. 

Meliheus, Tale of, 203. 

Merchant's Tale, 262-266. 

Merciless Beauty, 72. 

Messahala, 86. 

Miller's Tale, 36, 39, 173-179. 

Milton, 266, 267, 269. 

Monk's Tale, 33, 151, 203-207. 



INDEX 



297 



Nature, Chaucer's love of, 147- 

140. 
Nun's PriesCs Tale, 39, G8, 207- 

218. ' ^ 

Originality of Chaucer, 21. 
Orosius, 136. 
Otes de Graunsoun, 77. 
Ovid, 20, 61, 97, 127, 129, 136, 
137, 207, 284. 

Palamon and Arcite, 103, 107, 

168. 
Pandarus, 119-122. 
Papacy, England and the, 9-11. 
Pardoner, 20, 48, 223, 224. 
Pardoner's Tale, 36, 40, 222-231. 
"Parliament of Fowls, 18, 39, 63- 

68, 72, 140, 168. 
Parson's Tale, 284-288. 
Pathos of Chaucer, 40. 
Pearl, 12. 

Peasant's Revolt, 31. 
Petrarch, 17, 18, 42, 69, 125, 126, 

127, 132, 243, 254, 255, 259; 

supposed meeting with Chau 

cer, 255-257. 
Physician's Tale, 219-222. 
Pindarus Thebanus, 94. 
Plutarch, 136. 
Pope, 127, 264. 

Predestination, Problem of, 24. 
Prioress, 161, 190, 191. 
Prioress's Tale, 38, 39, 190-198 
Proves of the Sevyn Sages, 152. 
Prologue, 27, 145, 160-163. 
Protestantism, 5. 
Proverbs, 78. 

Radicalism of Chaucer, 25. 
Reeve's Tale, 39, 173-179. 
Reinecke Fuchs, 211, 212. 



Rembrandt, 160. 

Renaissance contrasted with 

MediiBvalisui, 3-7. 
Retractation, 288. 
Reynard the Fox, 210. 
Roman de Renart, 211,212. 
Roman de la Rose, 45-51, 59, 80, 

137, 220-222, 232, 243. 
Roman de Troie, 96-100. 
Romans des Sept Sages, 284. 
Romaunt of the Rose, 15, 45-56, 

65. 
Romulus, 210. 
Rosemound, To, 72, 73. 

St. Cecilia, 277-280. 
Second Nun's Tale, 277-280. 
Scholarship of Chaucer, 32. 
Scogan, 76. 

Shakespeare, 4,101, 104, 105. 
Shipman's Tale, 187-190. 
Simeon Metaphrastes, 279. 
Sir Gawayne, 12. 
Sir Thopas, 30, 34, 39, 199-203. 
Skepticism of Chaucer, 24. 
Socrates, 192. 

Somnium Scipionis, 65, 66, 127. 
Spenser, 242, 267. 
Squire's Tale, 266-270. 
Statins, 68, 63. 
Style of Chaucer, 41. 
Summoner's Tale, 23, 39, 249- 
252. 

Teseide, 65, 68, 69, 163-166. 

Theophrastus, 232. 

Thomas of Monmouth, 193. 

Trivet, Nicholas, 182, 183, 184. 

Troilus, 115-119. 

Troilus and Criseyde, 17, 38, 40, 

56, 84, 87-122, 124, 133, 

167, 168. 



298 



INDEX 



Troy Story, 91-101. 
Truth, 29, 30, 38, 73, 74. 
Two Noble Kinsmen, 172, 173. 

Valerius, 233. 

Versification of Chaucer, 34. 

Virgil, 98, 127, 129, 131, 136. 

Warton, 123, 126, 128, 267, 269. 
Whitfield, 231. 



Wiclif, 13, 287. 

Wife of Bath, 20, 48, 161, 238- 

240. 
Wife of Bath's Prologue, 231- 

238. 
Wife of Bath's Tale, 25, 39, 74, 

238-244. 
William of Norwich, 192, 193. 
Womanly Noblesse, 79. 
Words unto Adam, 69, 70, 91. 



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